THE VATICAN
MISSION EXPOSITION
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK * BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
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TORONTO
t
HIS HOLINESS, POPE PIUS XI
Inspirer of the Vatican Mission Exposition
THE VATICAN
MISSION EXPOSITION
A Window on the World
BY
Reverend John J. Considine, S.T.L.
OF THE CATHOLIC FOREIGN" MISSION SOCIETY
OF AMERICA (maRYKNOLl)
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1925
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1925,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped.
Published November, 1925
Printed in the United States of America
By The Cornwall Press
Jltfjtl ©bstat:
ARTHUR J. SCANLAN, S.T.D.
Censor Librorum
imprimatur :
)jl PATRICK CARDINAL HAYES
Archbishop, New York
New York, September 23, 1925.
The author of this book was sent to Rome in the fall
of 1924 to supervise the construction of the Maryknoll
mission booth at the Vatican Mission Exposition. His
interest in missions naturally extended itself beyond
the limits of his own Society and at the request of many,
encouraged also by his superiors, he has prepared this
summary of the general Exposition.
Most of the photographs in this book were made by
D’Amico, of Rome, and some by G. Felici of that city.
We are pleased to acknowledge the courtesy of these
two firms.
The Catholic Foreign Mission
Society of America,
Maryknoll, New York.
September, 1925.
PREFACE
It is a pleasure to feel that there is to be for the
American public this record of the Vatican Mission Ex¬
position. Among the pilgrims and travelers who dur¬
ing this Holy Year are making Rome their rendezvous,
thousands come from over the Atlantic. Yet it is the
desire of our gloriously reigning Pontiff, His Holiness
Pius XI, that as many Catholics as possible learn the
story of the Church’s missions by means of his exhibit in
the Vatican Gardens, and this desire should not be lim¬
ited in effectiveness to the relatively few in Xorth
America who can afford a journey to Europe.
This book promises to transport the Exposition from
Rome to the Catholic family circles of the United States
and Canada, yet not by what could have proven a seem¬
ingly endless recitation of tiring details. The author
has tried to say, not all that might be said, but just what
seemed to him should be said to give the lay person a
readable yet instructive glimpse at Catholic missions.
Rome, the Holy Year, the Vatican Mission Exposition,
supply the setting.
nun
PREFACE
We wish the work every blessing as it goes forth on
its career of usefulness.
President of the Committee for
the Vatican Mission Exposition.
ni2n
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface . 11
CHAPTER I
From the Cupola of Saint Peter’s . 21
CHAPTER II
The Proemium to the Epic . 32
CHAPTER III
The Hall of Retrospect . 45
CHAPTER IV
The Hall of Heroes . 60
CHAPTER V
The Americas . 76
CHAPTER VI
Africa, Land of the Question Mark ...... 93
CHAPTER VII
“The Sweet Waters of Asia” . . . . . Ill
[133
CHAPTER VIII PA0E
A Dip into India . 128
CHAPTER IX
The Halls of Far Cathay . 143
CHAPTER X
The Eesson Eearned . 162
APPENDIX
Mission Statistics . 173
[14a
ILLUSTRATIONS
His Holiness, Pope Pius XI . Frontispiece
PAGE
Saint Peter’s. The Vatican . 23
Court of the Pine Cone . 25
A Corner of the Vatican Gardens . 27
The Dome of Saint Peter’s Seen from Between the Two
China Halls . 29
His Holiness Addressing Guests at the Opening of the Expo¬
sition . 33
His Eminence, William Cardinal Van Rossum . 35
Most Reverend Francis Marchetti-Selvaggiani .... 37
Hall of the Holy Land . 39
Turkish Massacres in the Holy Land in 1920 .... 43
The Approach to the Exposition . 46
Signature of His Holiness, Pius XI . 49
The First Missioners to Circle the Globe . 53
Saint Francis Xavier, Ajiostle of the Indies and Japan . . 55
The Hall of North America . 59
Japanese Martyrs of 1603 . 63
Martyrdom of Father Marchand . 66
Blessed Theophane Venard . 68
Cardinal Massaia, Apostle to Ethiopia . 71
Death of Blessed Peter Chanel . 73
C151
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Father Felix Westerwoudt . 75
The Palatine Guards . 77
The Hall of South America . 79
Hut and Aborigines of Ecuador . 81
A Missioner Teaching Araueanian Indians . 83
A Picture Made of Parasites . 85
Father Ruppert, S.J . 89
Saint Peter Claver . 91
Cardinal Lavigerie, Founder of the White Fathers ... 95
Reproduction of a Cairo Mosque . 97
An Egyptian Pyramid in Mother-of-Pearl . 99
A Mill Hill Missioner with His Catechumens . 101
Elephant Tusks from Africa . 104
Hall of the Belgian Congo . 107
Committee of Missionary Helpers at the Exposition . . . 110
His Holiness visiting the Japanese Government Exhibit . . 113
Section of the Bagdad Village . 115
A Corner of the Indo-China Exhibit . 117
Models in the Oceania Exhibit . 121
Cannibals Preparing Victims for the Feast . 123
A Beauty Spot at the Exposition . 126
Honored Guests . 129
Meeting of Saint Francis Xavier and Bishop Albuquerque . 133
Testimonial from the Hierarchy of the Syrian Catholics . . 135
Indians Preparing Model of the Cathedral of Lahore . . . 138
Guardians. Saint Joseph and Temple Dragon . . . . 142
A Section of the China Halls . 145
[16]
ILLUSTRATIONS
Chinese Altar to the Goddess of Mercy .
Exhibit of the Diocese of Macao .
Bed from a Wealthy Chinese Home .
A sister (Canossian) Rescuing a Chinese Waif .
A Chinese Rickshaw Coolie .
Booth of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America
(Maryknoll) .
Model of the Oldest Catholic Church in China .
The Exposition Library of Missions .
The Hall of Medicine .
Exhibit of the Catholic Students’ Mission Crusade
Andrew Kim, First Native Priest of Korea .
nn
PAGE
147
149
151
153
156
158
160
164
167
169
171
THE VATICAN
MISSION EXPOSITION
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
A WINDOW ON THE WORLD
CHAPTER I
FROM THE CUPOLA OF SAINT PETER’S
A priest friend remarked to me a few weeks ago that
the best point of vantage from which to scan the Vati¬
can Mission Exposition is the cupola on the dome
of Saint Peter’s. I accepted the suggestion and one
sunny morning made the ascent. There is nothing ex¬
traordinary about this climb; it requires no acrobatic
skill and only enough energy to mount by easy stages
the six hundred and ninety steps.
I began by entering the door in the left aisle of the
basilica, opposite the tomb of the English Stuarts, and
walked up the spiral inclined plane to the terraces. I
examined from their rear the colossal statues of the
Apostles, which look down on the piazza below from
the fa9ade of this greatest of all the world’s churches.
With the Savior in their midst they stand like a line of
sentinels, challenging all who approach Saint Peter’s
C21J
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
to recall that God began His Church with missioners
and that His missionary commission to the Church is
not yet fulfilled. Then a short flight of steps, and I
stood at the base of the great dome. Another stairs
winds upwards between the outer and inner shell to the
lantern, itself a full-sized temple resting on the top of
the drum. A second balcony gives a superb view, not
only of the Vatican, but of all Rome, the Alban and
Sabine Hills, and the Apennines beyond.
The Vatican at our feet is not a beautiful building,
as is the Louvre in Paris, for instance, but it is massive
in its proportions, being the largest palace in the world.
Only one comparatively small corner is used as a resi¬
dence by the Holy Father, the portion on the far
right, near the colonnade which marks the approach to
Saint Peter’s. The rest, in general plan shaped like a
great letter H with the ends closed and with a total
length of a quarter of a mile, is a vast home of all the
arts that lift men’s minds to nobleness. There are six
chapels, a great group of museums, a gallery of splen¬
did paintings, and the largest library of rare books in
existence.
Six acres of ground are occupied with courts and
gardens. The farther of the two within the H is the
Cortile della Pigna, as large as a great city block. The
celebrated “Niche of Bramante” shows its graceful lines
in the sun at the far end of this court, beautifully cano¬
pying the sixth century bronze pine cone which stood
[22]
ST. PETER’S, ROME. VATICAN PALACE AT RIGHT
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
before the old Saint Peter’s and which gives the court its
name.
Filling this court, except for the palm trees in the
center, is the first group of Exposition buildings. There
are thirteen halls here, simple in architecture, for they
were built only for the Holy Year of 1925, but graceful
in their lines and in symmetry with the surrounding
structure. These thirteen halls were to have contained
the whole Exposition, when the Holy Father first called
for their design in 1923. More and more specimens
from the missions were promised, and His Holiness
then invited the Exposition Executive Committee to
bring the overflow across the avenue which runs parallel
to the left upright of the letter H as we look down from
the dome. So it is that the display invaded the Pope’s
private gardens.
These gardens are not remarkable compared with
those of palaces of temporal kings, but they are very
attractive when viewed as a whole, as one is able to see
them from the dome. There is the formal garden with
its curling pathways, plashing fountains, and designs
in box, and the little wood where His Holiness leaves
his carriage with almost unfailing punctuality each
afternoon at four to walk beneath the trees. On the
far side of the garden is the replica of the Grotto of
Lourdes; nearer us, two large moss-strewn fountain
pools ; while in the center is the masterpiece, lovely cool¬
faced stone rising out of the heavy semi-tropical green,
: 243
COURT OF THE PINE CONE
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
the Casino of Pius IY. It is a villa in classic design,
one of the world’s most perfect reminders of the smaller
ancient Roman country houses. Here the Holy Father
on fair afternoons may walk or sit and ponder for a
while, away from the whirl of business that is his as
guide of Christ’s world-wide Church.
This is the company which the seven additional Expo¬
sition pavilions are keeping as they stand in the Vati¬
can Gardens. A series of buildings devoted to admin¬
istration gives a total of twenty-four halls which were
built especially for the Exposition. But these were
not sufficient. A few weeks before opening day, the
call for more space became imperative. The Chiara-
monti Museum and the Galleria Lapidaria, two gal¬
leries totaling a quarter of a mile in length, were
closed to the public and opened a short while later
with their halls telling the story, not of dead ages
past, but of living twentieth-century apostolic
Christianity.
I stood near the top of this most perfect of the world’s
great domes, the credit for which goes to the masters,
Brunelleschi, Michael Angelo, and Della Porta, and
regretted the fact that not every visitor to the Vatican
Mission Exposition could journey to this balcony
for a concept of the proportions and the setting of this
epoch-making object lesson of the Church’s Catholicity.
From gate to gate the Exposition’s paths and corridors
are a mile and a half in length. The contents of its
L 26 J
A CORNER OF THE VATICAN GARDENS
On the roadway above the wall at right, the Holy Father drives every afternoon.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
twenty-six halls filled four thousand cases during their
journey from Asia, Africa, the Americas, and mission¬
ary points in Europe. Most of its treasures money
cannot buy, but a modest estimate of the intrinsic value
of its possessions is upward of two million dollars. No
agency on earth except the Holy Father could gather
such a mission display.
The days of the first Apostles are eighteen hundred
years behind us. The days of heroic missionary ex¬
plorers discovering new continents or new peoples are
gone forever. The days of martyrs — of wholesale
martyrdoms as even the nineteenth century knew — are
past, men say. But the day of a mass movement by
Catholics of the world, for the winning of the thousand
million souls still unconverted, is only now dawning,
some prophets think, and the Vatican Mission Exposi¬
tion is the aurora in the sky. Whether or not the
prophets are correct, only the years before us can
answer, but certain we are that there are thousands of
yearning hearts which beat with an exultant hope that
even the sages’ most humble forecasts may come true.
In the vanguard of these men and women of all
continents, who hunger for the completely world-wide
kingdom of God, is His Holiness. The idea of the
Vatican Mission Exposition is his very own, and the
thoroughness with which it is being carried out (such
features as its library of missions and its semi-monthly
Exposition review being examples) leads us to believe
[28]
THE DOME OF ST. PETER’S, SEEN FROM THE LOGGIA
BETWEEN THE TWO CHINA HALLS
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
that the Holy Year of 1925 marks the birth of a new
era in mission history.
I determined to get a view of the Exposition which
my friend had also laughingly recommended. I en¬
tered the dome and mounted the narrow stairway of the
cupola. The last of the long series of guards awaited
me at the top and explained that the great bronze ball
above the lantern (the ball in turn is surmounted by a
ten-foot cross), though it looks like a plaything from
the ground four hundred feet below, is eight feet in
diameter and twenty-three and a half feet in circum¬
ference, and will hold comfortably sixteen men. At
the cardinal points are slits in its surface, which form
four tiny windows, a few inches high and not an inch
in diameter. By the ladder I climbed into the ball and
looked through the north window to the ground below.
The Vatican Gardens, the Exposition, and in fact all
the Campagna to the north of Rome, appeared in pano¬
rama.
What a wonderful thing is a window! A tiny open¬
ing barely the width of my eye, in this otherwise pitch-
dark globe, gives the prospect of a whole countryside.
Yes, what a wonderful thing is a window that can lay
before the vision in an instant more ground than can
be traversed in a day. What a wonderful thing is any
instrument that gives us in panorama great vistas of
loveliness and inspiration. And if the expanses that
are laid before us are visions of whole continents, of
C30]
FROM THE CUPOLA OF SAINT PETER’S
whole peoples, of the thoughts ajid aspirations of those
peoples and the struggles of the Church of God to
bless those peoples with their birthright of the Faith,
what a marvelous handmaid for mind and soul is such an
agency! And is not the Vatican Mission Exposition
such? It is, indeed, a window on the world.
C313
CHAPTER II
THE PROEMIUM TO THE EPIC
“Come to Rome” was the keynote of Pius XI’s
encyclical to the Catholic world when he proclaimed the
Holy Year. But come “not as everyday travelers,” he
said. Come to fill the reservoirs of your soul with grace,
the storehouses of your mind with lofty thoughts, and
the fountains of your hearts with inspiration to achieve
for the kingdom of God.
His Holiness could not have chosen a more telling
means of serving the pilgrims of the world than the
Exposition which stands in his gardens. If you recall
your school day lessons on the government of the
Church, you will remember that gathered about the
Vatican are twelve organizations of carefully selected
priests, bishops, aud cardinals, called Congregations,
which are to the Holy Father what our Cabinet is to
the President of the United States. One of these or¬
ganizations is the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda,
which is entrusted with the direction of the world-wide
campaign for spreading the empire of the Savior.
To this Congregation fell the duty of preparing the
[32 ^
HIS HOLINESS, POPE PIUS XI, ADDRESSING GUESTS AT THE OPENING OF THE
EXPOSITION, DECEMBER 21, 1924.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
Exposition. The Roman mails bore word of the Holy
Father’s wish to every missioner in every corner of the
globe. Fully a year before the opening, great cases
began slowly moving toward Rome from every country
• — the answer to the plea that the fighters in the front
lines should help to make live at the center of Christen¬
dom their tremendous, but to so many Catholic millions
their unknown, struggle. Scholars and artists, then,
from several countries of Europe were called on to
portray the mission story with synthesis and beauty.
At least two hundred missioners and skilled workers
were gathered in Rome by Inauguration Day, Decem¬
ber 21, 1924.
Hence, within a few hundred yards of the Church’s
grandest temple, and beneath the windows of the home
of Christ’s Vicar, has been transported the story of the
life, the hardships, the spirit, of the present-day apos¬
tolic army. Some of the members of this army, even in
this age of rapid travel, are six months’ journey distant.
As we walk the corridors this morning some are driving
dog sleds over polar snows, some struggle through
jungle pathways of Central Africa, some ride the far
inland rivers of Asia. Some preach an apostolate in
cities which are alive with souls by tens of thousands;
some journey on prairies or mountains quiet as death,
laboring in thinly peopled waste lands to gather nomad
tribes to the brotherhood of Christ. What finer means
than an exhibition with such a theme could His Holi-
[34]
HIS EMINENCE, WILLIAM CARDINAL VAN ROSSUM
prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
ness have chosen, for impressing on all peoples that
the cross which tops the captive obelisk of Egypt’s
departed Pharaohs in the piazza before Saint Peter’s
is an emblem, as the inscription on the base suggests,
of a birthright of the souls of all the world !
But the Vatican Mission Exposition does not begin
its lesson with the portrayal of the present-day aposto-
late. The tale of Catholic missions is an epic whose
minstrel is the Christian ages. If we would have its
proemium we must take ourselves back to the cradle
days of Christianity, when Jesus of Nazareth walked in
Palestine. That is what the artist-minds who conceived
this pageant decided. Hence, as we begin our tour of
the Exposition, the first hall before us is the Hall of
the Holy Land.
I entered the hall the other morning to stare and
be curious. I left, as all others near me seemed to
leave, with the traits of the idle sight-seer sloughed off ;
I had been moved to the depths with the magnitude of
a thought which even I, a missioner, had heretofore not
sufficiently appreciated: Palestine was the home of a
missionary Savior.
In the center of the hall stands a great relief map,
twenty feet by ten feet, of Palestine from the mountains
of Libanus in the north to Bessarabia in the south. The
map is scientifically exact, the production of Professor
Marcelliani of Rome, who has made similar models of
the Roman Forum and of other important historic
[36]
MOST REVEREND FRANCIS MARCHETTI-SELVAGGIANI
Secretary for the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda, President of the
Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, and President of the
Vatican Exposition Committee,
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
remains in Europe. The concern of the Franciscans
for a worthy presentation of the subject of the hall,
which was left entirely in their hands, is evidenced by
the fact that forty thousand lire were expended for
this single item.
Nine other models, in wood or clay, have places, in¬
cluding Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Calvary, the Holy
Sepulchre, and several of the greatest of the Holy Land
basilicas. Glass cases along the wall are loaded with
Palestinian products, chiefly the work of Christian
scholars or children of the orphanages. There are beau¬
tiful creations in mother-of-pearl, there are silks, laces,
jewelry, carpetings, damasks, religious goods, vases,
statuary. High on the walls is a series of finely
executed paintings.
I stood on the side of the central model, where Pales¬
tine faces the sea, and felt the witchery of the artist’s
hand as I experienced the power of the casting to
transport from Italy to the Holy Land all who study
it intently. Palestine has only the area of our two
small states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, al¬
though it lies as far south as Georgia. Here in twenty
feet, therefore, every hill could by skill be given a place.
To the left are the snow-capped peaks north of
Galilee. A steady lowering of the mountains can
be noted until they change to hills, and finally, far below
Jerusalem, along the historic road to Egypt, dis¬
appear. Deep in the center of the mountains,
C38J
ever a
HALL OF THE HOLY LAND. RELIEF MAP OF PALESTINE IN CENTER
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
plaything for the winds of Galilee, is the Lake of
Genesareth. Here the Jordan seems to take its rise,
making a deep seam in the plateau through which it
runs, plunging so vigorously that when it reaches
Judea, where John the Baptist preached upon its banks,
it has sunk to thirteen hundred feet below the level of
the sea, — the greatest drop of any river in the world.
There is no escape for it now. It simply must gather,
spent, in its own bed, forming the heavy waters of the
Dead Sea with barren, unhealthy shores.
“Where is Bethlehem?” a man near me asked, but not
of me. A Franciscan in sandals and brown habit had
just approached.
“Here,” the friar answered, pointing with a rod, “a
few miles beyond Jerusalem. But this separate model
shows it more completely.” I followed with the queS'
tioner and item by item heard the description of each
point of interest in the town. “From Bethlehem,” the
guide continued, “the Holy Family fled along this road
to Egypt”; and as he turned to the larger model at
least a dozen more visitors were following him. So
came, city by city, incident by incident, the story of
Our Lord’s life. The Franciscan’s face lit as he talked,
and his words flowed like a mountain torrent. Had he
been there, I asked him later. Yes — for forty years!
Every body of men and women in the Church has
some special glory. The Franciscans have many, but
one of their grandest through the centuries has been
mon
THE PROEMIUM TO THE EPIC
their custody of the Holy Land. In 1219, while Cru¬
sader and Turk faced each other at Damietta, Saint
Francis of Assisi walked boldly through the Turkish
lines and proposed to the Sultan that he accept Chris¬
tianity. The Sultan declined, but the repute Francis
gained from this act of daring secured the concession
for him, and for all wearing the simple habit of the
monk by my side, to stand guard as special custodians
of the Holy Places. Since 1219 the story of the friars
who have labored in Palestine is a bloody but brilliant
page in the history of the Order. Today the Holy
Land and the surrounding countries constitute a prov¬
ince in which there are almost a thousand sons of Saint
Francis. These good religious, helped by the alms of
all the Catholic world, are raising worthy edifices over
the spots made sacred by the presence of the Savior.
It was not monuments, however, but two little hills,
which made my morning in the Hall of the Holy Land
most memorable. “Here is Gethsemani,” said the
friar, “the events of the last night and morning began
here.” Then our eyes set on his finger as it threaded
the streets of Jerusalem, we followed each incident
until we passed out of the gate of the city with J esus
cross-laden, and the friar moved on from the model
of Jerusalem to the model of the Mount of Calvary.
There was no mighty church on the spot, as today ; only
the skull-like hill with three crosses, the hole into which
the executioners’ instruments and the gibbets were
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
thrown and from which Saint Helena had them excav¬
ated, and the old ajid new tombs of Joseph of Arima-
thea.
But these were enough. The friar told his tale sim¬
ply. The hall was hushed as he mentioned the three
hours, at the end of which the Heart in the Frame on
that central cross quivered and stopped. Reverently he
told of the entombment. Then — queerly, but with mar¬
velous aptness, as I think of its effect — the monk men¬
tioned the Resurrection and gave a gleeful chuckle;
exactly why, I do,n’t know, but like the shifting motif in
the music of an opera, the little act had dramatic power
to make each listener realize how deeply the speaker felt
the change of the theme from sorrow to joy.
This was the first hill — the hill of the Crucifixion.
The second was on the other side of the city near
Bethany.
“You see,” said the Franciscan, “just outside the city
is Olivet, a Sabbath Day’s journey as the Scripture
says — less than two miles — from Jerusalem. Here Our
Lord gave His last command, to prepare all men to
receive the salvation He had bought for them. To the
Apostles He said as He rose: ‘Going, therefore, teach
ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’ ”
What a masterly introduction was this for a mission¬
ary exposition! Yet it was simple, merely a reminder
that J esus was Himself the First Missioner.
PAINTING DEPICTING TURKISH MASSACRES IN THE HOLY LAND IN 1920
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
Of the paintings about the walls, the series ends with
four canvases of the Near East massacres in Palestine
and its vicinity in 1920. One of the striking incidents
of the Exposition took place beneath the third of the
four, recently. Three sons and a daughter led an old
Italian mother to this painting, and on their pointing
out its subject she fell to her knees with cries of bitter
grief and hysterical sobbing. Bystanders asked why,
and learned that she was the mother of the Franciscan
whose death was portrayed on the canvas. I met some
of the people who had witnessed the event and felt that
I had been behind the scenes of a sacred drama.
One last painting held my attention before I left the
hall. The artist Barberis, a young Roman of great
promise, has portrayed a low, slow-mounting Eastern
street, steps bright with sunlight, and a deep blue East¬
ern sky beyond. By the side of the steps kneels a group
wrapt in reverential awe. The painting’s title gives its
story — “Jesus has passed.” Jesus has passed, has lived
a brief span on the earth. Tread these halls thought¬
fully now, and know more truly the meaning of His
passing.
CHAPTER III
THE HALL OF RETROSPECT
If a writer sought as a theme some cross-section of
history that would give him a concentrated series of
thrills and inspirations, he might take the story of the
world’s great warriors, he might take the daring ex¬
plorers, or he might take the missionary pioneers. The
Vatican Mission Exposition’s Hall of History will
vanquish all questioners of the assertion that Catholic
missions can supply as fascinating romance and as nobly
beautiful human characters as can any field i,n the
realms of history or fiction.
The hall’s display is by no means one of dry facts,
doled out in indigestible pills of statistics. It is simple
in the extreme, a collection of paintings, photographs,
documents. Yet these are not merely dead oils, dry
parchment, silent prints. Let yourself be drawn into
studying but a few, and you will find yourself en¬
thralled with an enchanting story of flesh and blood, of
heroism and consecration.
There are intimate human-interest stories that move
us in their revelation of the hearts of the old pioneers.
[45:
THE APPROACH TO THE EXPOSITION. ADMINISTRATION BUILDINGS AT RIGHT.
THE HALL OF RETROSPECT
Such, for instance, is the letter from India, sent by the
missioner Laureati in 1727, two hundred years ago, to
his sister Angelica in Europe, over a year’s journey
from him. There is the thrilling career of the Fran¬
ciscan Father Peter Farde, to which we shall return in
a few minutes, and which outstrips many a modern
“movie” drama. Besides tales which grip us with en¬
thusiastic admiration of hardihood and daring, there
are impressive evidences of the scholarship which char¬
acterized so many of the modern missiojiers’ predeces¬
sors. On every side are touching proofs of fealty to
Home, of patience and joy under trial, of unwavering
fidelity to duty. There is revealed in the Catholic
apostle the intrepidity of the soldier, the cleverness of
the diplomat, the learning of the savant, the holiness
of the saint.
Opinions vary as to the dividing points in the history
of Catholic missions, hut the eras accepted by the com¬
mittee which prepared this hall are four. From the
Apostles to Saint Benedict (529) constitutes the first
period; from Saint Benedict to Saint Francis of Assisi
(1219), the second; from Saint Francis of Assisi to the
discovery of America (1492), the third; from Columbus
to the present, the unclosed fourth period.
In the first period the Church lay like the seed be¬
neath the ground, away from the hostile daylight of
the Roman world; and when finally it had been given
powerful roots by bloodshed and bitter sacrifice, it
C47]
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
sprang into glorious bloom on the word of Constantine.
From the time of Benedict to that of the “poor man of
Assisi” took place the conversion of Europe. Saint
Francis and his contemporary, Saint Dominic, founded
vigorous preaching orders and initiated organized mis¬
sions to the Moslem and to Asia. Christopher Colum¬
bus burst the bonds which kept seamen huddled about
the Mediterranean and the shores of northern Europe.
Unprecedented expansion began, and with every ship¬
load of fortune hunters sailed trail blazers of the Cross.
This modern period, still in progress, is by far the
greatest in the possibilities presented for the advance of
Christendom.
In the first three centuries the Church was prop¬
agated by persecution. Edicts of the Caesars announced
the tidings that a new Gospel was come, though they
proclaimed it to destroy it. At the time of the Edict
of Constantine (312), fifty million Christians were to
be found throughout the Roman Empire. Though a
splendid impulse came with the Christian Emperor,
troubles came too, for great heresies were borji, and
internecine quarrels.
Saint Benedict is held as leader of a new period be¬
cause his monasticism gave the impetus for the con¬
version of western Europe. Behind a little town be¬
tween Rome and Naples rises the bold peak, Monte
Casino, at whose top in 529 this monk made his
first foundation. I saw in one of its cloisters the
SIGNATURE OF HIS HOLINESS, PIUS XI, IN THE VISITORS’
BOOK OF THE EXPOSITION
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
ruin still standing of the Greek temple which he
destroyed— a fit symbol of the false faiths his followers
would drive from whole nations. A quaint medieval
map in the hall shows the Benedictine monasteries dot¬
ting northern Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, and
Germany, — the great beacon towers of Europe that
flashed the light of Christ to our forefathers. Theirs
was the movement which succeeded the Irish foundations
made by the followers of Saint Patrick. The sixth
to the eleventh centuries are hallowed by such other
names as Augustine, Columban, Gall, Palladius, Willi-
brord, Boniface, Ansgar, Cyril, Methodius. The
Prayerbook of Wessobriinn (Benedictine monastery in
Bavaria, founded in 753), the first Christian document
in the German language, has place in one of the hall’s
glass cases. It was written about 800. A plan of the
famous old monastery of Saint Gall, dated 830, lies
before our eyes and reminds us once again what a great
world of industry, of learning, of piety, was each of
those Benedictine establishments.
Rich new blood coursed through the Church’s apostol¬
ic life-streams on the coming of Saint Francis of Assisi,
“the herald of the Great King,” and Saint Dominic,
“the hammer of the infidels.” The two great bodies of
friars which they established advanced on the non-
Christian fields which in their day were on the very
thresholds of Europe. Moslemism formed a crescent
front from Spain to Persia, Tatars rode the Russian
C50J
THE HALL OF RETROSPECT
steppes, and several peoples around the Baltic were
yet in paganism. Both orders sent bands to the
Moslems and quickly found themselves with martyr
names to write in gold. The first papal bull establish¬
ing Franciscan missions, dated 1225, is in the hall. And
the original copy, with its deletions and corrections, of
the Summa Contra Gentiles prepared by Saint Thomas
Aquinas, is on display to remind theologians that this
book, so frequently referred to without thought of its
missionary character, was written by the master
Thomas to win the non-Christians of his day.
Mostly interesting in this period, though not per¬
manently fruitful, were the missions into Asia. When
the first embassy from the Holy See reached, in Persia,
the camp of one of the fierce rulers of the mighty Tatar
empire, the Khan, in indignation at the impertinence of
a request for treatment on a basis of equality, threat¬
ened to flay the leader, stuff his empty skin with straw,
and send it by his companions back to Rome. On one
of the posts of the hall hangs a photographic copy of
the letter, now in the Vatican archives, from the Mon¬
gol, Guyuk Khaji, to Pope Innocent IV. It was
carried by the Franciscan, John of Plano Carpini, in
1246. In haughty contempt the Khan demanded that
the Pope, followed by the kings of Europe, come to
Tatary and pay him homage as his subjects. A trans¬
lation of the seal reads: “With the power of the eter¬
nal heaven, the Khan from ocean to ocean of the people
C51J
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
of the great Mongols orders this. If it reaches those
for whom it is intended, let them respect and fear it!”
Photographic copies of the valuable accounts written
by the daring monks, John of Plano Carpini (1245-
1246) and William of Ruysbroek (1253-1255), are to
be seen in the hall. Of greater importance were the
expeditions across the whole of Asia, later in the cen¬
tury, by John of Monte Corvino and his helpers. The
document of Nicholas IV commissioning John in 1289
is shown, and a large painting of Nicholas, who is called
“indefatigable exponent of missions.” Two thousand
missionary letters and documents are ascribed to him
in the four years of his reign (1288-1292). A letter
from John of Monte Corvino, written from Peking in
1292-1293, is also to be seen.
By far the greater part of the material found in
the hall relates to the last period of missions. This is
natural enough, since the activity has been greater and
the period is near enough in centuries to our own day
to permit of documents being extant.
First place in this last period is given to Christopher
Columbus and Father della Rabida, O. F. M., the great
mariner’s counselor and friend. Under the painting of
Columbus is the statement that the salvation of the
infidel was one of the motives for his attempt to seek
the new world. Della Rabida accompanied Columbus
as a missioner in 1493. Henry the Navigator’s ships
rounded the Cape of Good Hope almost contempora-
css]
IBS
f.
PR AVQVSTWIANI QVI PRJMI EX OMNIBVS MISSIONARY
FIDE1 PROPAGANDAE CAVSA ORB EM C1RCVIERVNT. MDXLII. MDXUX
THE FIRST MISSIONERS TO CIRCLE THE GLOBE
They left Europe in 1542 and returned in 1549.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
neously with Columbus’ discoveries, so it became only
a matter of a few years before the earth was circled. A
very interesting painting in the hall is that of the four
Augustinian friars who were the first missioners to
girdle the globe (1542-1549).
Precisely when they could aid powerfully, the Jesuits
were founded, and we reach the apogee of missionary
greatness in one of Saint Ignatius’ first sons, Saint
Francis Xavier. His Holiness, Benedict XV, wrote of
him that he was “worthy to be compared with the
Apostles,” than which there could be no finer tribute.
Saint Francis Xavier has the place of places in the
hall : over the arch of one of the entrances hangs a large
tapestry showing Francis on his knees before Ignatius,
receiving the latter’s blessing on the eve of setting out
for India. His ship left Portugal in April, 1541, and
after thirteen months (May, 1542), he reached Goa.
The journey is now made in a couple of weeks. An
English army officer remarked to me, as we passed
through this hall a few weeks ago, that he likes best
to think of Francis as he played games of chance with
the soldiers aboard during that voyage and, on winning
their confidence as well as their money, won their souls
back to God. Doubtless it was Francis’ “humanness”
combined with his holiness that made him such a power.
A large, carefully prepared chart gives Francis’
voyages during his ten years of marvelous activity in
India, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, the East Indies,
C54J
SAINT FRANCIS XAVIER, APOSTLE OF THE INDIES
AND JAPAN
This inspiring statue stands in the center of the first India Hall.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
and Japan. Finally comes his death, on Sancian Island
off the coast of China. I certainly felt a hungry affec¬
tion for that bit of land as I gazed on it, for I thought
of my three Maryknoll Seminary companions — one
from Philadelphia, one from Saint Louis, and the third
from Stuart, Iowa — all familiar with that spot, where
they trod Saint Francis' last paths as they began their
own life apostolate. May the fire of Saint Francis
touch the hearts — and heels — of all American mis¬
sioned !
It must suffice for us merely to say that the mass of
historic lore in the hall takes us to every continent. Sev¬
eral documents, for example, give the sad story of the
early missions in Japan. An extensive collection of
documents, wood-cuts, and paintings relates to the dis¬
tinguished line of Jesuit scholars who opened China:
Ricci, Schall, Verbiest. A copy of the Chinese testi¬
monial tablet which the Emperor Xum Chi erected to
Father Schall for his reform of the Chinese calendar;
a letter on silk from the Queen Regent Helena, in
1650, to the eighth General of the Jesuits; and a cut of
the Emperor Kang-hi (1661-1722), labeled “friend and
protector of the missioned,” prove that the Jesuits
were in high honor at the court. The fall, so fatal to
the quick spread of Christianity in the empire, was
brought about by enemies; and then follow letters of
the next century, witnessing to persecutions and hard¬
ships.
[56J
THE HALL OF RETROSPECT
Journeys to the Far East since the rounding of the
Cape were made principally by water, but there is an
interesting chart of phenomenal walking tours by
J esuits of the seventeenth century, which compare
favorably with those of other orders in earlier times.
A manuscript history of the Capuchin missions in Tibet,
1704-1756, proves that over two hundred years ago
there was solid mission activity in that deepest recess
of Asia. A peculiar letter is one from Tibet, written in
1742 by a Father Constantino. Each line is sixteen
inches across, perfectly straight though the paper is un¬
ruled, and the letter is four and a half feet long, written
in a small, close hand!
India’s great apostle to the Brahmins, De Nobili
(1577-1656), is represented by many writings and the
design of a church which he planned to overcome the
caste problem. Monsignor de La Motte (1624-1679)
and Monsignor Pallu (1626-1684), founders of the
great Paris Society for Foreign Missions, both of them
bishops to Asia, have places of honor. The Jesuit mis¬
sions in South America are well represented. The page
of the Dominican Master-General, Cajetan, is shown,
on which he wrote in 1508 the command for the first
Dominicans to go to Mexico.
Father Hennepin, O.F.M., a North American hero;
Father Marquette, the Jesuit martyr among the Iro¬
quois; and the great warrior of the Rockies, Father
De Smet, are prominently represented. The record of
C57d
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
the Franciscans in the Philippines from 1577 to 1897
reveals that there were over four thousand missioners
to those islands, of whom seventy-two were martyred,
six canonized, and eight beatified.
The prize tale in the hall, it seems to me, is that of
Father Peter Farde, O.F.M., who sailed from Amster¬
dam for the missions of Asia in July, 1686. Opposite
Gibraltar his ship was attacked by pirates and driven
off its course. Off the Canaries it was again attacked,
and this time Father Peter was made prisoner. He was
taken to Bugia in North Africa, where he was sold as
a slave. Thence he followed his master across the
Sahara to the town of Agadir. There he was servant,
architect, missioner, until freed by his owner. While
seeking the coast to fly home, he was again made
prisoner and taken by caravan to the lower Congo.
His second master freed him, but on taking a vessel he
was shipwrecked on the desert island of Ascension,
northwest of Saint Helena. There he lived in solitude
for eleven months, until some filibusters picked him up
and took him to Morocco. He got home to Flanders in
1690. The record does not say, but, like all good Fran¬
ciscans, he probably saluted his superior on his knees
and waited placidly for a new “obedience” to some other
of the mission fields of the globe.
I left the Hall of History, breathing a prayer of
thanks to God that He has given us the age-long line
of missioners.
THE HALL OF NORTH AMERICA
CHAPTER IV
THE HALL OF HEROES
In the Museum of Naples, one of the world’s finest,
there is a hall of sculpture, every statue in which is the
bust of a Cassar. Above the pillars fir the Roman basil¬
ica of Saint Paul’s-Outside-the-Walls are line on line
of mosaics, each representing one of the two hundred
and sixty Popes from Saint Peter to Pius XI. We
stand amidst such assemblies of temporal rulers or
spiritual pontiffs, and we may feel dazed by the radiance
of their aureolas of greatness. Even the noble line
which runs back to the Savior, however — and certainly
much less the pagan emperors of old Rome- — failed to
move me so profoundly as did a glorious concourse of
heroes among whom I have lingered many times and
to whom I hope to return often before quitting the
Eternal City. These are the confessors for Christian¬
ity throughout the ages, who have their place in the
Hall of Martyrs of the Vatican Exposition.
Of Christ’s twelve Apostles, nearly all are credited
with violent death in testimony of Him. During the
first three hundred years every Pope of the Church was
a saintly martyr. On this very Mons Vaticanus, the
THE HALL OF HEROES
hill which now is the world’s center of Catholicity, Nero
had his gardens and used living bodies of Christians
covered with burning pitch as torches for his prome¬
nades. The Hall of Mission Heroes, however, takes it
for granted that we know the story of those ages. The
simple statue of Pope Saint Gregory commissioning
Saint Augustine represents the centuries of the conver¬
sion of Europe; and we pass to the dawn of modern
Europe, marked by the organization of the friars.
From this point on, in the Hall of Heroes, we can
trace the history of missions by the martyrs. The Mo¬
hammedan lands of Africa and the Near East were the
fields of death in the thirteenth century. A plaster cast
of one of the bas-reliefs on the foot of the pulpit of
Santa Croce, Florence, commemorates the death in
Morocco of the five protomartyrs of the Franciscans.
The Trinitarians and Mercedarians, organizations
which found birth in the thirteenth century for the
redemption of Christian captives, are represented by
several paintings. The barren Moslem lands have
taken their toll in every century since, but the fruits as
yet are small indeed. When God lets loose the flood of
grace which the martyr apostles among the people of
the Prophet have stored up for a thousand years and
more, the fierce hostility of those millions, today the
most formidable single force opposed to Christianity,
should melt as wax.
The trail blazers to Eastern Asia opened up the
C613
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
greatest field for heroism which the Church has known
since the Roman persecutions, with the possible excep¬
tion of the blood-drenched territory of the Levant.
Most of the memorials in the Hall bear on the Far
East and concern the persecutions in J apan, China, and
Indo-China.
What a marvelous drama is that of the missions of
Japan — what a tragedy! Established by Saint Fran¬
cis Xavier, the Church in half a century had a following
of several hundreds of thousands and was mounting
with giant strides to first place in the empire. Then, as
rapidly, as tremendously, as her rise, came the cataclysm
of her destruction. But even her ruins blaze in glory.
The most completely treated episode in the hall is that
of the persecutions in Japan.
There are thirty-four different items, all of value,
bearing on the subject. Toward the end of the six¬
teenth century, Dutch traders, anxious to acquire the
Spanish and Portuguese trade, are said to have poisoned
the minds of the authorities^ and condemnation came.
An original of the decree of persecution, painted on
heavy wood as it was posted on the highways of the
empire, is to be seen in one of the cases. It bears
the famous words of the then reigning sovereign: “So
long as the sun shines on the earth, let no Christian set
foot in Japan!” Copies of this edict were still found
posted after Perry opened for the West the Land of
the Mikado. Specimens are to be seen in manv
[62]
A JAPANESE PAINTING OF MARTYRS OF 1603
Ihree of these native Christians were noblewomen, one was a seven-year-old boy.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
museums, the Catholic University in Washington pos¬
sessing one which was presented to it by the sterling
Catholic, Admiral Yamomoto of Tokyo.
The persecution opened with the death of Blessed
Ignatius of Azevedo and thirty-three Jesuit compan¬
ions, in 1570. Every few years thereafter, hands large
or small were executed. The most exquisite refinements
of cruelty were evolved as years went by, and the deaths
toward the end are horrible to relate. The heaviest toll
of lives occurred in the south, in and near Nagasaki.
Gateyama Hill, called by the Christians the Holy
Mount, has a place at the Exposition, for it was con¬
secrated by the blood of innumerable victims.
When the persecutions broke out, thousands proved
faithless, it is true, but there were many beautiful exam¬
ples of fidelity. A drawing shows a crucifixion in 1603,
three of the victims being women and the fourth a
seven-year-old boy named Louis. There is a document
in the Vatican Library, a photograph of which is to be
seen here, of an oath signed on March 22, 1613, by
forty-two Japanese Christians, in which they promise
to defend the missioners unto death. There are proofs
of the fortitude of the missioners, as well, in many of
the letters, some written from prison or from hiding
shortly before death. An example of the vigorous men
who entered the country during the years after the
condemnation is Blessed Angelo Orsucci. He sailed
first from Europe to Mexico, and from there made
[64J
THE HALL OF HEROES
three journeys to Japan. After his fifth voyage over
the Pacific he was discovered and martyred, in 1622.
When the last five Jesuits had given their lives by
undergoing the abominable “torment of the pit,” the
records of this Society alone showed one hundred and
eleven missioners as victims of the holocaust. The
Franciscans, the Augustinians, and the Dominicans,
likewise, had notable lists. The Catholic population had
been exterminated, it was thought.
But not so. Bishop Petitjean and his Paris Foreign
Mission priests discovered, in 1869, after Christianity
in Japan had lived for two hundred and fifty years in
the silence of the tomb, that in the hills about Nagasaki
tens of thousands of Japanese had passed down the
Faith in absolute secrecy from generation to generation.
A crucifix cherished through the centuries is shown in
the hall, a gift to the bishop from one of those remark¬
able old Catholic families.
A field with almost as gory a record, but of a later
date, is Indo-China. About twenty-five items, supplied
by the Dominicans and the Paris Foreign Missions
priests, suggest the story of the frightful path of blood
along which the Church there has passed. The per¬
secution lasted for decades, in the storm of 1883-1885
alo,ne thirty thousand Christians being martyred. The
Dominicans have had duplicates made of many of the
implements of torture employed, and several paintings
and prints depict their losses. The total, including their
L65]
MARTYRDOM OF FATHER MARCHAND
This painting is the work of a Tonkingese artist. It is in the Paris
Seminary for Foreign Missions.
THE HALL OF HEROES
tertiaries, is thirteen hundred and fourteen. The chain
which bound the Spanish bishop, Hermosilla, before his
death in 1861, may be seen, and relics of many of the
natives. One simple item which tells volumes is the
dress of an infant of four months killed in its mother’s
arms.
The souvenirs of the Paris Foreign Missions priests
awakened the liveliest recollections in my mind. There
are several possessions of Blessed Theophane Venard,
including an act of consecration from his pen, for a
part of which he used as ink his own blood. The young
saint, thirty-two years old when he was beheaded, had
a charm which captivated even his jailers. A striking
illustration of this is the unusually light prison chain
which the mandarin who was charged with guarding
him had made especially, in order to give him the
minimum of discomfort.
Let me make a parenthesis here and say that the
whole Hall of Mission Heroes reminds me of a similar
but smaller Hall of Martyrs in the Rue du Bac in
Paris. The Paris Seminary was founded in 1665, and
since then has sent out over thirty-two hundred mis-
sioners to Asia. In 1690 it had its baptism of blood
by the martyrdom of two of its sons in Burma, and the
losses since have been such that it has won the title of
“Seminary of Martyrs.” If there be any who believe
that the spirit of the Christian hero is dead, let them
stand as I did in that seminary corridor for a brief
[67]
BLESSED THEOPHANE VENARD MARTYRED IN TONG-
KING IN 1861
THE HALL OF HEROES
moment in the early light of the new day and see the
students who will be tomorrow’s apostles seek out the
Hall of Martyrs. It is their daily morning practice
through all their years of preparation. In a glass frame
before their eyes is the blood-soaked mat slashed by
knife strokes, on which John Charles Cornay, but
twenty-eight years old and only three years ordained,
was laid alive and cut to pieces. In a case at the side
is his chalice, which each new missioner about to leave
for the field is privileged to use. Some three hundred
more relics, instruments of torture, and personal be¬
longings of the martyrs, line the walls and cupboards.
I met a young Canadian student in the Paris Sem¬
inary and asked him if any of his companions ever
thought of martyrdom. “It is like this,” he answered
quietly, “Paris has sent out about three thousand mis-
sioners, and of those something over two hundred—
about one in ten — have met with violent deaths; while
eighty— about one in forty — have been martyred. A
Paris Father in China at this moment is lost among the
bandits ajod we have had no news from him for months.
The latest priest martyred was Father Castanet, in
1911. Now, we number at present in this house eighty-
five. We may feel quite sure, you see, that seven or
eight of us will be killed at our work, and — who knows ?
— perhaps one or two will meet with martyrdom. And
why not hope it will be oneself?”
Most impressive, because closest in time, in China’s
w
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
long line of losses is the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. An
estimated twenty-five thousand Christians lost their
lives. Gruesome in its realism is a photograph at the
Exposition of the battered body of the Belgian Father
Victor Delbrouck, O.F.M., crammed into the box in
which it was brought to his fellow Franciscans. A pic¬
ture of a group of twenty-two missioners of Manchuria
is shown, gathered in happy reunion about their bishop.
But a short while before, six of their number, including
the bishop, were victims of the scourge.
Perhaps it has never occurred to the ordinary Catho¬
lic reader that great numbers of the martyrs of the
apostolate are priests about thirty years old and but a
few years in the ministry. Of the thirteen beatified
priests of Paris, nine were in their thirties. A line of
impressive photographs of the missioners of Scheut,
Belgium, martyred by the Boxers, reveals that one
Belgian, buried alive, was but thirty-one years old;
three others, burnt, were twenty-seven, twenty-nine,
and thirty-six, years of age respectively; while four
others were in the neighborhood of thirty.
Perhaps we have had enough of this gruesome recital.
Yet we have touched on but a few countries of the
East. Besides the rest of Asia, there are Africa,
Oceania, and the Americas. The most beautiful paint¬
ings in the hall are: the Vincentians, Blessed Gabriel
Perboyre, martyred in China in 1840, and Blessed
Francis Regis Clet, martyred there in 1820; the Marist,
C70]
CARDINAL MASSAIA, APOSTLE TO ETHIOPIA
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
Blessed Peter Chanel, martyred after a year’s aposto-
late in Oceania; and the Jesuit confessor, Saint Peter
Claver, apostle among the outraged Negro slaves in
Central America. All of these paintings are from the
Vatican Galleries. The face of young Chanel still
haunts me as he lies against the hut he himself had built,
wounded and dying. He made only one convert before
his martyrdom, which occurred when he was but one
year ordained, but the mission he founded now flou¬
rishes through the graces he won for it.
But let us remember that not all martyrs are men,
although Sisters did not go to the Asiatic missions until
the nineteenth century. At Tientsin, in 1870, ten Sis¬
ters were brutally hacked to pieces by a mob ; and in the
Boxer uprising of 1900 seven Franciscan Missionaries
of Mary were among the victims. There were many
native Sisters martyred, some of whom have been raised
nominatim to our altars. Relics of Blessed Lucy Y and
Blessed Agatha Lin, Chinese martyrs of 1862, are
found in the hall.
The native clergy as well as the European have a
high claim to glory. The seminary of Pulo, Penang,
founded originally in Siam but now located at Singa¬
pore, has had over one hundred of its graduates mar¬
tyred. In Tongking, between 1858 and 1862, seventy-
five priests won the crown.
The Hall of Heroes is not only for those who have
been slain in service. Some, like Saint Francis of Assisi
C72J
DEATH OF BLESSED PETER CHANEL, PROTOMARTYR
OF OCEANIA
This painting is from the Vatican Galleries.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
and Saint Francis Xavier, died natural deaths but in
surroundings which reminded them to the last of their
apostolate. Cardinals Corrado, missioner in Tripoli,
Massaia, apostle to the Gallas in Ethiopia, and Lavi-
gerie, founder of the White Fathers, are three mis-
sioners of Africa represented. Mother Mary of the
Passion, founder of the Franciscan Missionaries of
Mary, who died in India in 1904, and one of her So¬
ciety’s fairest daughters, Sister Assunta, who died in a
convent in China in 1905, have a place.
But more, the hall is not to mean, for the visitor, a
mere temple of glory which provides a niche for every
bygone hero. It reveals, rather, the marvelous living
dynamo of love and sacrifice which is the driving power,
the heart, of the apostolate, a spirit in the Church
which not only was yesterday, but thrives today. A
limitless capacity to face hostility, whether of men, of
beasts, of elements, to advance the empire of Christ is
the characteristic of the spirit of the martyr. Countless
thousands, of whom the world will never know, have
lived for years in the mission field with bitter sacrifices
the portion of each day’s work. A few among the
many in every generation have been called on, are being
called on, to crystallize in one great jewel the rivers of
fortitude within their souls by undergoing torture and
death. We pay them our homage — but let us not be
unmindful that they are the relatively few summoned
to testify from the ranks of a host which envies them
their privilege. We salute thee, Spirit of the Martyrs!
PAINTING OF FATHER FELIX WESTERWOUDT, MISSIONER IN BORNEO
This young Dutch priest, though not a martyr in fact, led so holy, zealous, and mortified a life, that
he is an inspiring example of one animated by the spirit of the martyrs.
CHAPTER V
THE AMERICAS
A Roman beggar has had a post outside the Vatican
Museum for the last thirty years. He has memories
of four Popes and recalls clearly the Holy Year of
1900. We have become quite good friends, and the
other morning he gave a leap of exultation as I confided
to him the fact that I am an American. Immediately
he asked, “Do you know Mr. Morgan?” I hesitated
just the wink of an eye, and without claiming to be one
of J. Pierpont’s bosom friends I replied modestly, “I
have seen Mr. Morgan.” Mr. Morgan visited the
Vatican Museum some years ago and apparently made a
strong impression on the poor cripple.
The beggar represents one of Europe’s currents of
thought regarding America — that it is the land of mil¬
lionaires. A couple of young Exposition guards a few
days ago voiced another view. Standing before the
exhibit of the Mongolian herdsmen with saddles, guns,
and tents, one remarked with a look akin to envy:
“Ah, but in America you have cowboys with their
broncos and lassos!” This is the America of the
“movies.”
men
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
The America of the scholars, however, is the Amer¬
ica of the redskin. The wandering tribes who four cen¬
turies ago were scattered through the ten-thousand-
mile stretch from the Aleutian Islands to Tierra del
Fuego are the life study of many in Europe as well as
in our own land. The juggernaut wheels of the white
man’s civilization drove over parts of the Western
Hemisphere as if the Indian did not exist; but the
ethnologist of today hastens to study him, lest the last
chapter, also, of the passing race go unwritten and
future ages point a finger of scorn for the unrecorded
data.
Ethnologists are interested, and one other body of
men — the missioners. Two halls of the Vatican Mis¬
sion Exposition are devoted to the Americas, and their
chief subject is the red man.
When the Spaniard found the New World it had
inhabitants of one hundred and fifty different stocks,
speaking one thousand languages. There were the
plains tribes living on the buffalo; tribes along the
western rivers, whose sustenance was the salmon; tribes
along the Mississippi, in the wooded Alleghenies, and
on the Atlantic from the Saint Lawrence to Florida.
Central America had its peoples, of whom the fierce
Aztecs were foremost, possessing such culture that their
ruined cities are on a par with the classic remains of
Pompeii and Ostia.
South America, much larger territorially than the
[78]
A CORNER OF THE HALL OF SOUTH AMERICA
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
continent to the north, likewise had tribes in every sec¬
tion, of whom those along the backbone of the Andes
were highest in development. The Quichuas of Peru,
of whom the Incas are best known to the world at large,
were most advanced of all dwellers on the two con¬
tinents. They had a well-knit government, the arts
and sciences, and a mild character which disavowed the
human sacrifices and cannibalism of the Aztecs. On
the southern tip of South America, in “the land of fire,”
dwelt the lowest type of all, people living practically
without clothing, shelter, structure, or any art worthy
of the name.
Into this aboriginal world the Spaniard came, and
within sixty years his settlements were found from
Florida to Tierra del Fuego. Gold hunters made up
great bodies of the forces, and the Indian felt their
cruel hand. But missioners came, also. Perhaps the
brightest page in their story is Paraguay, where at one
time a body of five hundred and sixty-four Jesuits had
brought wandering tribes to a settled life in the famous
“reductions.” In other parts, Las Casas showed how
to tame savage hearts by music, and Junipero Serra and
his Franciscans developed the picturesque California
missions. Everywhere in the Spanish dominions the
Indian was let live, and though his descendants have
not taken a leading place in the modern life of the
Americas, some at least are well advanced on the road
to civilization.
[80]
MODELS OF A NATIVE HUT AND ABORIGINES OF ECUADOR
This hut stands in the Court of the Pine Cone. It is part of the Salesian exhibit.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
A fact of which many of us in the United States are
not aware is that missionary efforts still go on in our
neighbor continent. One of the finest halls in the Ex¬
position is that of South America, and there the Sale-
sians and Franciscans are most prominent. In 1875 the
society of the great Don Bosco sent out its first mission
band to Patagonia. The other day I met the man who,
as a young priest, one of Don Bosco’s first followers, led
this initial group overseas. For years he tramped the
Argentine plains, crossed deserts, pushed through for¬
ests, forded rivers, built chapels, raised up houses of
charity and learning, won souls. Then he was called
home, and as an act of honor to his society for its
apostolic efforts he was made a prince of the Church
— His Eminence, John Cardinal Cagliero. He remains
as simple, however, as when in days gone by he reined
his pony to fling a bantering word at the Indian boys
who exulted in his attentions. Now the youngsters
about his Roman home, when the venerable warrior
returns from a visit to the Vatican or to one of the
Congregations, rush on him jubilantly and with shouts
and whoops carry him up the stairway to his room.
Other missioners, too, are heroes in modern South
America. The name Fagnano is more sacred in Tierra
del Fuego than that of Magellan, who discovered the
land. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century
this man led a band into those islands after Darwin had
pronounced the “irreclaimable savages” as “in a lower
C82]
A MISSIONER TEACHING ARAUCANIAN INDIANS
These striking models are in the Capuchin exhibit.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
state of improvement than in any part of the world.”
Charity opened ways of which science never dreamed,
and today those hopeless ones are on the path to both
civilization and Christianity. A Redemptorist from
Holland pointed out to me a leper asylum in his obscure
mission in Hutch Guiana, in which a former lady-in-
waiting in the royal court of Austria is one of the
nuns.
Few exhibits in the whole Exposition are better pre¬
pared than those of the Salesians. Their seven fields in
South America could hold a visitor for a day, though the
Franciscan exhibit is not less interesting. There are
hundreds of marvelously plumaged birds; curious ani¬
mals such as the ant-eater, the armadillo, the tapir; and
splendid collections of precious woods, of minerals, of
plants. There are domestic animals such as the llama,
and the venomous snakes of the forbidding jungles.
The people are graphically portrayed by models, and
the missioner’s work of course is made clear. In this
respect the scenic group of the Capuchin missioner
teaching catechism among the Araucanian wigwam
dwellers of Chile is most impressive.
In the early French territory in North America, mis-
sioners likewise did their best to plant the Cross. Un¬
fortunately, on the borders of what is now eastern
Canada was the land of the Five Nations, strongest unit
of North American Indians, and the French settlers
and missioners became embroiled with them through the
C84]
A PICTURE MADE OF PARASITES
A missioner in the frozen north, lacking material for an exhibit, made this picture from mounted fleas and
sent it with this label: The Only Picture of Its Kind in the World. Made from Parasites, the Torment of
the Missioner, the Gift of His Flock.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
tribes who had been marked for annihilation by the
Iroquois. The French Jesuits, between 1640 and 1650,
felt the bitter sting of the hate which these Indians
conceived for the religion accepted by many of their
enemies. As a result we have J ogues, Lalemant, and a
half score other famous martyrs. In spite of this op¬
position, however, the Faith was planted solidly among
many tribes which today are still loyal. The Oblates of
Mary Immaculate, represented well at the Exposition,
have in later days written a glorious missionary page by
their work in northern Canada.
The rise and expansion of our United States has out¬
stripped the colonizing efforts in all other parts of the
New World. “The American character” as we know
it is something distinctive, a development of the soil, not
an importation. Its chief quality of greatness is a
strong personal initiative which submits to all reason¬
able requirements of organization. It is a blend of
Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Romance, with, many authorities
would have us believe, the business genius, the hardy
bargaining ability, of the traditional Anglo-Saxon pre¬
dominating. There is little in its history, however, that
is missionary. Some of the missionary work among our
Indians even at present is European effort. I met in
Washington, two years ago, a splendid German priest,
shifted from his mission field in Cameroons, Africa, to
a new mission field assigned to his society in South
Dakota. The Franciscan in the Exposition’s Hall of
[sen
THE AMERICAS
North America has returned after sixteen years of
service — in our New Mexico.
But the Church in America today recognizes its duty
to the Indian. The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions
was founded by our hierarchy in 1870, after President
Grant’s unhappy apportionment of the tribes. (Of the
seventy-two agencies which he established, thirty-eight
had received Christianity from Catholic missioners; vet
only eight were assigned to the Church, eighty thousand
Catholic Indians being placed in the charge of the
sects.) Besides acting as the Hierarchy’s representa¬
tive before the Government, the Bureau raises funds
for mission work. There are between four and five
hundred thousand Indians north of Mexico today, three
hundred and thirty-six thousand of whom are in the
I nited States. About sixty thousand are practising
Catholics, attended by well over two hundred mission-
ei s. The exhibit for North America naturally does not
compare with such collections as that in the National
Museum in Washington, or in the Metropolitan
Museum in New York, but for the European it is
intensely interesting.
The Eskimos of Alaska are not strictly of red man
stock, resembling more the peoples of other continents .
within the Arctic Circle. American Jesuits are their
shepherds today. The most appealing item in the Hall
of North America is the painting of a missioner lying
face downward on the snowy waste, a great dog sitting
C87n
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
at his head. The priest is Father Ruppert, S.J., “a
martyr to charity,” as the painting is entitled. His
story is well known in the United States. On December
15, 1923, he left his mission at Hot Springs to go by
dogsled to Nome for Christmas presents for his or¬
phans. It was in the depth of winter and the journey
was dangerous, he was warned. But he could not dis¬
appoint his eager little ones. A storm, wild animals
— exactly what, is not known — frightened the dog
team, and the missioner was lost. One year to the
very day and hour before the opening of the Vati¬
can Exposition, his frozen body was found eight miles
from Nome. The dog in the picture is an interesting
feature of the sad but beautiful tale. He was the
leader of the team, highly intelligent, very faithful.
Though so hungry that he gnawed the fur from the
inside of the missioner’s cap, this dumb guardian had
to be overcome by the searchers before they could touch
his master’s body.
America’s present greatest missionary problem is not
the aborigine, however, but another race, every one of
whose ancestors came to our shores against his will.
Unfortunately the Negro is not given the prominence
he should receive in the Exposition, probably because
the workers among that race found it difficult to portray
their activities in any form except photographs.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
when an African tribe was victorious in war it took its
[88]
FATHER RUPPERT, S.J.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
prisoners to the coast and sold them. The price was
sometimes glass trinkets, sometimes gaudy blankets,
usually wares worth approximately a couple of dollars.
Some of the human chattels went to Moslem masters in
Asia, some to Arabs of the Red or Mediterranean Seas,
some were stowed in ships’ holds and brought to the
Americas. They were treated so cruelly in the journey
over the Atlantic that often fifty per cent died before
the Western Hemisphere was reached, but the trade
was profitable; a sound black body could bring $175 or
$200. Missioners sometimes met vessels as they un¬
loaded their fear-crazed victims. Saint Peter Claver,
by making this his life-work at Cartagena in New
Spain, has won the title, Apostle of the Neg?’0. Some
Catholic owners gave at least the second generation of
those unfortunates Christianity; descendants of slaves
in Maryland and Louisiana have the Faith. But that
the activity was not very thorough is evident from the
fact that, of the more than ten million in the United
States today, hardly a quarter of a million are Catholic,
and almost six million are catalogued as members of no
Christian church.
At the Exposition, Saint Joseph’s Society of the
Sacred Heart of Washington, and the African So¬
ciety 6f Lyons are represented. The Society of the
Divine' Word and the Fathers of the Holy Ghost have
displays, but not in connection with this work. Sev¬
eral such beautiful congregations as Mother Drexel’s
Coo 3
SAINT PETER CLAVER LISTENING TO SAINT ALPHONSUS RODRIGUEZ
This painting (the central one) is from the Vatican Galleries. Saint Peter is the figure at the left.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament are unrecorded. Per¬
haps the poor showing is indicative of the relative neg¬
lect we are giving this project. Catholic missionary
effort through the ages has reached altogether too heroic
proportions to justify its being branded as inadequate
to this task.
The feeling toward the black race needs no expound¬
ing here. A Westerner who visited the Exposition re¬
cently gave a far too prevailing view when upon my
first mention of the Negroes he remarked, “Yes, those
are the devils who flash the diamonds out my way.”
I have sat in the Congressional Library in Washing¬
ton and admired the young Negro scholars, men and
women, who hour upon hour pored over their books
as they perused their studies. My heart ached for them
as I thought of the unreasonable hate that refuses the
smallest recognition to even those farthest advanced in
the race’s rapid strides toward culture. I know the
problems as well as do the bitterest critics, but I cannot
forget that there is a doctrine, sealed by the Blood of
Christ, to live and let live. And to let live does not
mean merely to suffer others to eke out an existence.
It means to allow them, and to help them, to enjoy the
perfect Christian life of body, mind, and soul.
C923
CHAPTER VI
AFRICA, LAND OF THE QUESTION MARK
An American woman long resident in Paris came to
the Exposition recently and asked to see Africa. It
was no mystery land to her. She had been hunting
seven months in the Belgian Congo, and incidentally,
at the time of her visit, was “a little concerned” about
her son who was flying to Africa that day with his
wife.
Why Africa, only a few hours by air from Europe’s
capitals, and in days gone by always within easy reach
of the ancient Romans’ galleys, should have been
so long a closed continent it is hard, at least on first'
thought, to understand. Seventy-five years ago, the
six magnificent halls of the Vatican Mission Expo¬
sition now devoted to the Dark Continent would have
been impossible of preparation. The Sahara was not
crossed by a European expedition until the fifties.
Lake Albert, the first of the Great Lakes in the east
center of the continent to be discovered, was not found
till the sixties. Aside from the crossing of the Sahara,
it was the explorations of Africa’s rivers in the late
nineteenth century which opened up the interior.
[93]
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
Livingstone became famous for his work on the Zambesi
and Congo, while Stanley plied the Congo’s upper
reaches only in 1876-1877. Central Africa was not
explored before 1900, and the work still goes on.
We can paint five bars over Africa’s twelve million
square miles (one-fifth of the earth’s surface) and they
will give us the divisions of the continent. The central
bar is green 'and stands for the jungle land from 15°
north to 20° south of the equator. Not all here is dense
tropical tangle, of course; yet solemn forests, in which
men may travel for weeks and months without seeing
the sky except in chance clearings, are characteristic
of the country. South and north are two bars of yellow,
not of equal size, one standing for the Sahara’s sands
and the other for the vast solitude of the Kalahari.
These are the true limits of the Africa of story ; the
Africa of the elephant, the giraffe, the hippopotamus,
the gorilla ; of ivory, of rubber, of slave raids.
On the north and south we paint two white bars,
which signify that at the top and the bottom is the
foreigner’s Africa, the Africa of the Moslem on the
Mediterranean, the Africa of the European settler in
the Cape Colony. Of course, all promises soon to be
foreign, for, with the exception of Liberia and Abys¬
sinia, the whole vast territory, five times the size of
continental United States, is even now in the possession
of the Powers.
It is sad to recall that all Moslem Africa was once
CARDINAL LAVIGERIE, FOUNDER OF THE WHITE
FATHERS OF AFRICA
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
one of Christianity’s fairest realms. Saint Mark
planted the faith in Alexandria, and Christian Roman
soldiers at Carthage. Such great men as Clement,
Origen, Athanasius, Cyril, Tertullian, Cyprian, and
Augustine, be jeweled the Church’s crown there with
their brilliancy; but the Faith was weakened by bicker¬
ings and discord and fell before Islam. Ever since,
the Moslem has glared disdainfully over the Mediter¬
ranean at his conquered adversary. A few of the old
sees remain, and Cardinal Lavigerie’s magnificent or¬
ganization strives to penetrate the opposition of the
followers of the Prophet. Thus far, however, all ef¬
forts have been in vain; the cathedrals raised under
the protection of European arms echo hollowly the sad
fact of an almost negligible following.
The missions of this territory are beautifully repre¬
sented at the Exposition, but by the handiwork of the
Mussulman whom the missioners yearn to win. There
is a display of splendid gifts, which the Sliltan of
Egypt sent by the Franciscans to the Holy Father —
an inkstand of gold, ivory, and brilliants, a Cairo
mosque and a chair, both in precious wood and mother-
of-pearl, a skillful copy of one of Egypt’s last obelisks
— but these are the cold gifts of diplomacy.
For a long period it was the policy of some coloniz¬
ing Europeans to demand absolute neutrality on relig¬
ion in Moslem territory, but Cardinal Lavigerie refused
to take this stand when in 1867 he was in effect given
[963
REPRODUCTION OF A CAIRO MOSQUE
This exquisite model, executed in mother-of-pearl and precious woods,
is one of four gifts to the Holy Father from the Sultan of Egypt.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
leadership of the Church in North Africa. He strove
vigorously for assimilation and conversion. His mis-
sioners wore the red fez and the white flowing robe of
the Arab, and whatever little start has been made among
these people is due in an important degree to the states¬
manship and organizing genius of this great cardinal.
It is the Africa of the black which has so long been
the closed continent. When Henry the Navigator’s
sailors, contemporaries of Columbus, crept down the
coast to the Cape of Storms, almost immediately mis-
sioners from Spain, Portugal, and Italy began to work
on both east and west coasts. But difficulties within
the Church, Protestantism, and the French Revolution,
crushed their efforts. In 1823 the tiny Republic of
Liberia was founded by American influence as a land
for freed slaves, and Bishop England of Charleston
noticed the avidity with which Protestants set about
the establishment of their communions there. Eighteen
years later, in 1841, the Vicar-General of Philadelphia,
Father Edward Barron, set out as a volunteer to estab¬
lish Catholicity, taking as helpers a Father John Kelly
and an Irish layman named Pindar.
Father Barron, representative of the Holy See, had
a mission field without missioners. Father F. M. Liber-
mann, head of the reorganized Holy Ghost Fathers, had
missioners without a field. The two met at Our Lady
of Victory’s shrine in Paris, and as a result the Holy
Ghost Fathers received their first mission in Africa, a
[98]
AN EGYPTIAN PYRAMID IN MOTHER-OF-PEARL
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
territory along the Atlantic coast greater in extent than
the stretch from Panama to Alaska and containing tens
of millions of souls.
The first seven priests sent out began work in the
famous “White Man’s Grave” and all were dead within
a few months. Others immediately volunteered to take
their places. For the first ten years, of the seventy
priests who died, twenty-nine passed away before reach¬
ing the age of thirty, thirty-seven before coming to
forty, seven before fifty, while only three passed the
fifty mark. Between 1895 and 1905, sixty-seven of the
hundred and sixty-two deaths were of men under thirty.
Conditions, however, are now being improved by sani¬
tation. The Holy Ghost missioners to Africa in seventy
years have numbered over seven hundred. Though
most of them came from Europe, now, at the novi¬
tiate at Ferndale, Connecticut, Americans are being
prepared as successors to the heroes who have held the
place of honor among Africa’s nineteenth-century pio¬
neers.
In the last generation or so, great strides have been
made. The original Holy Ghost territory has been
divided into thirty-nine missions, and the continent has
ninety-four mission districts. Many remain as yet in a
primitive stage of development, but others are flourish¬
ing splendidly. The Lake region and Madagascar can
be counted as most promising to date. The Mill Hill
Fathers have their best mission there. The White
[100]
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
Fathers in the Lake country of Uganda have the same
number of blacks under their care as we have Negro
inhabitants in the United States ; yet within a period of
approximately fifty years they have converted almost
one hundred thousand more natives than we can count
Catholics among the Negro after his centuries within
our territory.
Of the million and a quarter Catholics in Africa,
three quarters of a million are in the east and center.
This section also has a larger total of missioners thaji
either the west or the south — one thousand, against the
six hundred and fifty in each of the other two areas.
Missioners from America are as yet all too few, but tiny
groups can be found in some parts of the continent.
For instance, two La Salette Fathers are at work in
their Society’s field in Madagascar, and there, too,
lies the body of a young Rhode Island apostle, who went
to the mission in 1920, Father Joseph Cote.
Many discerning visitors to the Exposition have
given the palm for interest to the Africa halls, meaning
the black man’s Africa, to which five of the continent’s
six sections are devoted. The first hall, for instance, is
given entirely to the Belgian Congo, and a day would
be required simply to note in succession the names and
descriptions of each of the hundreds of objects within
its compass. The same is true of the other four halls,
which run the gamut of all the important sub j ects relat¬
ing to a people — their country, with its vegetable and
[102]
AFRICA, LAND OF THE QUESTION MARK
animal kingdoms, their homes, their personal character¬
istics, their religion.
Mariannhill, for instance, that splendid Society with
a mission in Natal and a center in our own Detroit,
has a model, nearly full size, of the hemispherical straw
homes of the Zulus. There are, too, the tchaga hut of
Kilimanjaro on the East Coast, the indhlu hut of the
Jesuit field in Swaziland, the Orange River area hut,
the pontok of Namaqualand in the south, a miniature
Zambesi village, the homes, ancient and less ancient, of
Basutoland in South Africa. All are different, all are
interesting.
There are botanical studies, geological collections,
and curiosities of natural history, such as the egg, equal
in capacity to one hundred and fifty hen’s eggs, of the
prehistoric oepyornis, a monster of the ostrich type. A
crocodile lies in state in a glass case, monkeys and other
small animals are perched in many places, the pelts of
big game hold positions on the walls, a wild boar pro¬
trudes his vicious head into the aisle. Elephant tusks
are an attraction to all passers-by and provoke the ex¬
planation that the African Jumbo, unlike his brother in
India, is untamable, yet is protected by law for his
ivory and wanders in herds of one or two hundred as
quite a privileged character. The animals catch the at¬
tention of many of that class of visitors who scorn all
pretence of interest in ologies or isms. Monsignor
Quinn of New York enjoyed the earnestness of an
POCI
ELEPHANT TUSKS FROM AFRICA
AFRICA, LAND OF THE QUESTION MARK
Italian pilgrim who insisted on proving that a mount
labeled “desert wolf” was not a wolf, but a fox.
But the human species is the true center of atten¬
tion. Negro Africa’s population totals close to one
hundred and thirty million, not evenly distributed, but
most numerous in the Upper Nile and Niger regions,
near the Great Lakes, and in parts of the south. It is
as ridiculously incorrect to say that all the inhabitants
are the same, as it would be to make a like statement
regarding all whites of Europe and America. One
division specifies five great families of tribes : the
Negritos or Pygmies; the Hottentots; the Bantus;
the Negritians; and the Hamites. As the division of
the Exposition is geographical, and the classes are in¬
termingled, they are -not clearly presented in the halls,
but it is very evident from the photographs and models
that races so diverse as the dwarfed Bushmen and the
large-bodied Negritians must likewise possess diverse
qualities of character.
Africa is a stamping ground for atheist and Christian
in the struggle for evidence of the evolution of religious
ideas. The atheist utters the blasphemy that a won¬
derfully beautiful but illusionary soul in the Person of
Jesus Christ reached the apex in the refinement of the
fanciful excogitations known as religious truth, the
crudest forms of which are found among such primitive
tribes as the Bushmen, the Hottentots, the Bantus.
The Church’s scholars in Europe have denied, of course,
P05]
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
but who from his seat in a university could know the
thoughts of the primitives of Africa?
The missioner alone was able to solve the problem.
With the Cross of Christ, he went for his life work to
the thresholds of Africa’s homes, deep in her forests
and grasslands. Five, ten, twenty years he plodded.
By loving, devoted study he crept slowly but surely into
the sanctuary of the shyest black man’s mind. Then
to the universities of Europe he sent his discoveries:
that even the lowest of the low in the scale of mankind
have a notion of an Unseen God ; Master of all things,
Organizer of the world; of the survival of the soul; of
reward and punishment ; of the need of prayer and sac¬
rifice. In short, that these truths are not concoctions
of man’s fancy but are planted deep in the heart of
every man, even the lowest, and point to a primitive
revelation, once clear and beautiful, but in the course of
ages encrusted with superstition. These are the find¬
ings of such eminent missionary scholars as Archbishop
Le Roy, now Superior-General of the Fathers of the
Holy Ghost, and of the students under the leadership
of the Fathers of the Divine Word, who prepared the
Exposition’s marvelous Hall of Ethnology.
Animism is the general term for Africa’s religion.
It varies according to the tribe, but is always character¬
ized by lack of code, lack of official teaching, lack of
books, of schools, of a system. Sometimes it represents
spirits dwelling nowhere definitely, sometimes spirits
[106]
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Ph
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V
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c/5
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a
THE BELGIAN CONGO
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
inhabiting the things of nature, sometimes spirits dwell¬
ing in or represented by man-made or man-chosen ob¬
jects known as fetishes. Always, however, there is the
notion, clear or obscure, that one great Spirit rules
above all. The fetishes may be grotesque carvings,
the bones of men or animals, or bits of stone or wood
or metal. Strangest of all are a group in the hall
of the Belgian Congo. Early Spanish and Portuguese
missioners, forced to abandon their posts on the West
Coast, left behind them some crucifixes. Non-Chris¬
tian blacks came into possession of these and made
others, giving the Crucified One a Negro face, the em¬
blems being kept, not as reminders of Christ, but as
pagan fetishes!
I have heard a missioner stoutly deny that Moham¬
medanism is to be feared among these black people,
with whom a few decades of Catholic mission labor have
wrought such promising results. Yet the consensus of
opinion is that a religion is certainly to be regarded
with alarm which is so ready to present its creed by
force, by persuasion, by arguments of self-interest, by
playing on the spirit of imitation, by any means, with¬
out limit or scruple, that will expand its empire. Islam
has a simple doctrine, an attractive liturgy, an indulgent
morality, an enticingly painted paradise. Give this to
'the Negro, and his heart, which was good soil for the
seed of Christianity, becomes irredeemably fallow. The
Moslem is the one grave menace for a speedy rule of
D»83
AFRICA, LAND OF THE QUESTION MARK
Christ in Africa. So serious is the menace, indeed, that
men draw a great dark question mark on the continent
and ask, “For which, the Crescent or the Cross?”
As I walked through the Africa pavilions this morn¬
ing, two very attractive youngsters of the Boy Scout
type were listening, wide-eyed and captivated, to a
bearded White Father as he described very animatedly
the ways of the native huntsmen of the jungle. The
group was suggestive. The embryo missioners now in
the Christian world’s classrooms hold the answer to
Africa’s question. Their generation inherits from the
pioneers who have gone before great openings and great
promises. Great labors, far more tremendous than
those which have preceded, lie waiting ahead — and,
God willing, great fruits.
[109]
COMMITTEE OF MISSIONARY HELPERS AT THE EXPOSITION
The majority of these priests and Brothers are from the mission fields. Every continent is repre¬
sented. Seated are: Monsignor Grammatica, editor of the “Revista”; Archbishop Marchetti-Selvaggiani;
CHAPTER VII
“THE SWEET WATERS OF ASIA”
A photograph with a lure in its title holds a place in
the Hall of the Near East. It is called “Portal to the
Palace of the Sweet Waters of Asia” and portrays an
archway of lacelike stone, entrance to one of Constan¬
tinople’s royal dwellings. But it is not to venture into
this court of Moslem princes that the beholder yearns.
Instead, he feels the desire to cross the threshold of the
Orient and taste a nectar which, alas, is scant indeed
where Islam rules, but which nevertheless flows today
from the Suez to the farthest island of the Pacific. This
stream, of souls newly won for Christ, is Asia’s sweetest
water.
Our Lord was an Asiatic. But apparently, consid¬
ering Asia as a whole and glancing back over the cen¬
turies, we can paraphrase some of His words to read,
“A Prophet is not without honor save on His own
continent.” Asia, understood in the broad use of the
term which allows it to embrace the islands of the Pacif¬
ic, comprises one third of the earth’s surface and holds
more than one half of the earth’s peoples. Yet but
seven million of its nine hundred million are Catholic.
D113
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
The Asia exhibit, scanned at a glance, offers us seven
divisions: the Near East, India, Central Asia, South¬
eastern Asia, Oceania, China, and Japan. Eight large
halls of the Exposition are devoted to these lands. Four
of these halls, however, hold the treasures of India and
China, which we shall leave for another day.
The Near East, taken in our sense, means Palestine,
Syria, Arabia, Turkey, Mesopotamia, Persia; and we
include Afghanistan simply to give it a place. Catholic
missions have outposts throughout the whole region ex¬
cept in Afghanistan, but the ground is sadly fallow.
Turkey, most prominent nation here, has been reduced
by the war to a population hardly greater than that of
New York City, and both Great Britain and France
have increased their ascendancy by the treaty. Per¬
haps — perhaps — the future will prove brighter than the
past. It is the portion of a Christian devoutly to hope
so.
The great Persian Empire, bitter rival of ancient
Rome, kept stretched from Mesopotamia to the Cas¬
pian Sea a battle line which for centuries cried, “You
shall not pass!” When this empire fell, the Faith ad¬
vanced. But a brief span, and those Christians became
the Nestorian and Jacobite heretics. They flourished
after a fashion, but later were brutally crushed by the
Mongol and Tatar invasions of the thirteenth and four¬
teenth centuries. Finally, the Moslem swept all before
him, and today we stand in the Hall of the Near East
D12]
HIS HOLINESS VISITING THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT EXHIBIT
A Japanese Catholic priest is explaining the specimens.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
and look with a pang at the city of Constantine on the
Bosphorus which, a century before Columbus discov¬
ered America, became the home of the Turk. The
Armenian and Chaldean paid dearly, by centuries of
heart-rending suffering, for their loyalty to the Faith
of Christ.
The Exposition’s most interesting exhibit from the
Near East is the Bagdad- Village, prepared by a Car¬
melite Brother who was a missiojier for a score of years
in Mesopotamia. It sums up quite skillfully the lead¬
ing types of men and women in all Moslem lands.
There are thirty-nine life-size models beautifully exe¬
cuted and portraying in turn a men’s salon, a harem,
part of a bazaar, the desert life, and the religious life.
The little hall devoted to this presentation is one of the
most attractive spots of the Exposition.
The Jesuit center at Beirut is the Near East’s most
substantial mission institute. The Society has in this
Syrian city a small university and the best Catholic
press of the region. In 1923, one hundred and forty-
three thousand Volumes were printed there, besides
brochures and periodicals. A tri-weekly in Arabic, a
monthly in Arabic, and an Arabic edition of The Mes¬
senger of the Sacred Heart, are its journalistic prod¬
ucts, besides a French monthly for the university.
Aside from a few such establishments, however, the
Near East does not present any evidence of flourishing
Catholicity. A few heroic missioners — priests and nuns
pid
A SECTION OF THE BAGDAD VILLAGE
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
— are laboring there, but at present their efforts seem,
on the whole, fruitless.
India, orient pearl in the British crown, is to be held,
the Empire’s guardians understand, not without tender
nurturing. Hence we find on each side of this great
country minor territories rated at the Foreign Office
as buffer states — -Afghanistan, Bhutan, Tibet, Nepal,
Baluchistan, Siam. Afghanistan plays its part with¬
out much coaching, being bitterly Moslem and coldly
averse to the entry of any outsider within its realms.
On the line of the greatest age-old caravan routes, it
should have been the path for the Faith to India, and
possibly was the path of Saint Thomas. Today no mis-
sioner works within its confines.
A tiny exhibit in the China Hall represents Tibet,
the great plateau in the heart of Asia which, with
Nepal and Bhutan, lies at India’s northern border as a
barrier to Bolshevism. A line of hardy missioners has
traversed this land, the earliest recorded being the
Franciscan, Odoric, in the fourteenth century, and the
most famous being the Vincentians, Hue and Gabet.
Explorers also have emulated each other in contriving
to enter the forbidden land, freshest in the memories of
men being the daring Swede, Sven Hedin. The Expo¬
sition’s contribution is from the Paris missioners, who
for eighty years have camped, not in the country itself,
but on the borders where the caravans pass from China
to Lassa. Some four thousand Catholics are recorded
Di63
A CORNER OF THE INDO-CHINA EXHIBIT
Many beautiful specimens of native handiwork are assembled here,
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
for this field, where every worker is a carefully chosen
hero. Tibet proper is open in a limited way today, but
the two neighboring countries, Bhutan and Baluchistan,
together with Afghanistan, carry the distinction of be¬
ing most tightly closed of all lands on the globe.
But leaving the arid Levant and desert inner Asia,
let us travel out to the southeastern corner of the con¬
tinent to Indo-China and discover why men’s hearts
warm and their faces light when they dwell on the hopes
in the East. Indo-China proper is only a corner when
we speak of Asia, but is twice the size of Texas and
holds twenty-eight million people. We use the term
here to mean Siam, the Malay Peninsula, Cochin-
China, Tongking, Annam, Cambodia, Laos; the last
five countries being embraced in the French posses¬
sions. This bit of the earth seldom gets a place in the
headlines, but is important from the missioner’s view¬
point as a rich field for souls.
Siam’s church, now grown to ninety thousand, has
a history reddened with martyrdoms, but its story is a
modest one compared with other portions of this sec¬
tion, such as Annam and Tongking. Those countries
saw persecution in 1700; in 1750; from 1830 to 1843;
from 1850 to 1862. Yet the major portion of Indo-
China’s million and a quarter souls are from those fields,
and the most numerous native clergy of the East is
there— almost a thousand priests. The territory is the
pride of the Paris missioners, both because here they
CH8]
“THE SWEET WATERS OF ASIA”
gave so much of their blood and because here their labor
has borne such glorious fruit. The Hall of Indo-China
is the work of this Society and of the Dominicans, who
have four of the eighteen flourishing missions. The
hall is for me one of the best loved spots at the Exposi¬
tion, because of the sacred association with Bishop Her-
mosilla and the Dominican martyrs and the long line
of prints on the walls representing the Paris missioners,
among whom is Blessed Theophane Venard, so dear
to all Maryknollers, put to death in Tongking at the
age of thirty-two.
If the world could only peep behind the scenes and
learn at close range the stuff of which these pioneers
were made! I came upon a little brochure in the Ex¬
position store, entitled “Martyrs and Poets,” and
thought to myself how splendid it would be if you, and
you, and you, friends back in America, could con this
book and get to the hearts of the army of men who have
gone to death in Far Asia. The work is a collection
of music and poetry written by the missioners. One
of the first selections, for instance, is entitled “To Joy,”
and is a dashing, vigorous song by Monsignor Berneux,
written in prison in Tongking in 1841, flinging con¬
tempt at the persecutions of the mandarins. It hap¬
pened that he escaped death on that occasion and was
sent from Tongking to Korea, where in 1866 he found
himself in another persecution and that time won the
palm.
P19H
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
There are several songs by Theophane Venard, and
a poem by Just de Bretenieres, martyred in Korea in
1866 at the age of twenty-seven. A missioner named
Dallet lay sick in Paris when the news came of the
Korean martyrdoms; a song he wrote at the time is
printed. There is the song of a missioner to his mother ;
there is one “To my little sister Marguerite”; there are
songs to Mary, Our Mother of Aspirants, Our Mother
of Missioners, Our Mother of Martyrs; there are sev¬
eral poems of the campaigners to their fallen comrades.
From such materials, rather than from statistics or
official documents, one secures a true appreciation of
the missioners. In them, as in the missio1ners’ letters to
dear ones in the homeland, are revealed glimpses of the
apostolic love that has sent men singing into the for¬
bidding lands of death.
There is one more item to mention before we leave
southeast Asia. It is not the precious art of the people,
the array of ancestor tablets, the exquisite mother-of-
pearl work. It is a little pile of copy-books from a Sis¬
ters’ school of Malacca in the Malay Peninsula. One
of the secrets of the Exposition’s success is the delight
of missioners and people in all parts of the mission field
at the thought of sending from their distant homes
something that would stand within the halls of the Vat¬
ican and fall beneath the eyes of His Holiness. From
this farthest tip of Asia this fact is splendidly revealed
by these schoolgirl contributions. An ingenuous little
[1203
MODELS IN THE OCEANIA EXHIBIT
A Marist missioner baptizing with water from a sea-shell.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
letter written in French, holding first place in each
book, shows the spirit of the young hearts preparing
their work to journey over the seas to Rome.
“Most Holy Father,” one reads, “everybody in the
convent is working for the Pope. My companions have
made some pretty things for you and I myself have
made a box of very pretty beads. Pray for me, Most
Holy Father.” Then another: “Most Holy Father, I
am still a pagaji but I love the good God and I pray to
Him every day. All my pagan companions also pray
every day. We do not believe any more in idols or in
the superstitions of our poor parents, but on account of
them we cannot yet become Christians. We are too
young. Pray for us, Most Holy Father.” “Most
Holy Father, my name is Marguerite Marie,” begins a
third; and then follows Marguerite’s sweet tale of how
she came to the convent at six, very unwillingly — “as a
little savage,” she says — but has come to love the Sisters
with all her heart. But she has still many faults, she
continues; she looks very, very spitefully at all who try
to check her, and does not pardon very easily. “Bless
me, Most Holy Father, that I may correct myself.”
But now we have stayed too long on the mainland and
must review with only a word the island world in the
Pacific: the East Indies, Oceania, the Philippines, and
Japan.
Malaysia, a term including the Indies, has fifty mil¬
lion inhabitants and one hundred and fifty dialects.
[122]
CANNIBALS PREPARING VICTIMS FOR THE FEAST
This scene was posed for the missioner’s camera by natives of the Solomon Islands. In the days of man-
eating, dead enemies were disjointed, stacked in piles, surrounded with hot stones, covered with grass, and baked
The fork attached to frame at left of the picture was actually used to eat human flesh.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
Moslems, Chinese, and wild tribes of the interior make
up its peoples, all now under British or Dutch suze¬
rainty. The exhibit for this part of the world is small,
but an entire hall is given to Oceania, which Bishop
Shahan of the Catholic University said was, for him,
the most interesting of the whole Exposition.
Oceania is the term for some fifteen hundred islands
which dot the Southern Pacific. Many of them were
unknown to the outside world till the nineteenth cen¬
tury. Their peoples have the development of Africa’s
primitives, though each group varies in its degree of
civilization. In the Exposition hall, marvelously plu-
maged feathered folk such as the bird of paradise, beau¬
tiful butterflies, impossible-looking dancing costumes,
strange fetishes, bark cloth, battle clubs, all cooperate
to tell the story of strange tribal peoples of the open
who, as the Chinese say, are all their life long “combed
by the winds and bathed by the rains.” Here is the
vanishing domain of the head-hunter, the witch-doctor,
the cannibal. A large posed picture of the methods of
the anthropophagite is ornamented with a fork which
was used, in the palmy days before the coming of the
European, for eating human flesh. Where Islam has
not entered, these two million five hundred thousand are
still open to the preaching of the Gospel. One quarter
million are already within the fold. If we could but
send a troopship of missioners tomorrow, to occupy
overnight those gems of the Pacific!
D2U
“THE SWEET WATERS OF ASIA”
From Oceania’s hall we walk across an ilex-hooded
terrace to the pavilion of the Philippines and Japan.
The Philippines mean, to the American, Uncle Sam’s
biggest try in colony management, and to the world at
large they have proven him a gopd experimenter. The
whole of Eastern Asia, it is said, has felt the influence
of our broad policies in the islands. There are some who
feel they should blame Washington for the ninety thou¬
sand Protestants enlisted in this territory since 1900.
Perhaps, however, given a few more decades, we can
properly man the islands with clergy and begin a
rugged rebuilding which will reveal the present sad
plight as a blessing in disguise.
It is an interesting side light on Japan that, though
there is perhaps no country outside Moslem lands in
which the Faith has less promise of immediate advance
thaji in the empire of the Mikado, there are few coun¬
tries which have been more concerned about being prop¬
erly represented at the Exposition than Far Nippon. A
large exhibit has been sent by the Japanese Govern¬
ment itself, and a representative from Tokyo has visited
the Exposition to censor its erection. It is hardly out
of concern, however, for the hundred arid eighty thou¬
sand Catholics among the empire’s eighty millions, nor
from any desire that the religion of Christ should flou¬
rish in the islands. Rather, the genius for diplomacy is
revealed in this presentation. Korea (to which the
Paris missioners have welcomed new comrades in the
[125]
A BEAUTY SPOT AT THE EXPOSITION
Japan and Philippine Halls are at the left, China Halls at the right.
“THE SWEET WATERS OF ASIA”
Americans of Maryknoll) holds out present hopes for
a more substantial advance for the Gospel. Already
it contains more Catholics than its master state.
In all this vast territory which we have covered, there
are a bare two million Catholics. The other five of
Asia’s seven million faithful are in China and India.
This is natural, as seven hundred and fifty million of
Asia’s nine hundred million inhabitants are likewise in
China and India. All remaining Asia has a population
hardly thirty million greater than that which lives under
the American flag.
C1273
CHAPTER VIII
A DIP INTO INDIA
The whole world meets these days in the Exposition
halls. This morning, His Eminence, Cardinal Bourne
of London, paid a call of two hours; there were two
bishops from Australia; a bishop from Ireland; a
couple from Germany; two from Italy; one from the
United States; and an archbishop and a bishop of the
native Church of Malabar in India. This is not an
extraordinary day; rather, Rome takes it quite for
granted. Perhaps a few of the “contadini,” the farmer
folk among the pilgrims, stared a bit at the dusky skins
of the Malabar bishops, but after some weeks in the at¬
mosphere of the Eternal City most of us find the earth
dwarfed to a bit of countryside.
There is the necessary inconvenience, rapidly being
minimized, of some days or weeks of travel to touch at
certain points of its surface. There is the unfortunate
fact of retarded development in the dwellers of many
parts, which leaves some of them for the time being even
as low as the head-hunter stage. And there is, for the
present, among some hundreds of millions, a rather bit¬
ter bias against Jesus Christ, due to our failure to
£128]
HONORED GUESTS
At the right of His Holiness is Cardinal Gasparri, Papal Secretary of
State. At the left is Archbishop Marchetti-Selvaggiani.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
open the way for God’s grace. But the globe is one,
and rather tamely small, the thinker in world terms de¬
cides. Get away from the provincialism, he says, that
calls for a shudder at the name of China, a start of
horror at the thought of Africa, a sigh of vague help¬
lessness at the “incomprehensible orientalness” of India.
There is a brotherhood of man, there is a universal¬
ity of truth. Rome is the mountain height on which
flares the beacon that is meant to light all continents and
to unite all men. Not with the self-complacent, self-
centered Westerner coolly placed on an upper plane,
and the races of Asia gazing up from below. Instead,
the accidents of deficient environment and education
are to be removed, and it is to be discovered that the
essential differences between the intelligence, the quali¬
ties of soul and heart, of the men of the whole globe are
small indeed.
This is the frame of mind in which to enter the India
halls. If you go to India thinking you are superior to
the representative Indian, you will leave him disgusted
and come away yourself chagrined. He will detest your
ignorance ; you will bewail it.
India, as we use the term, includes the great triangle
suspended below the Himalayas, the island of Ceylon,
and the countries of Burma and Bengal. It is three-
quarters of the size of Europe and holds one-fifth of all
the people on the globe. All but one hundred million
are of the same Aryan stock as the European, a small
[130]
A Dir INTO INDIA
group of aborigines having claim to priority of occupa¬
tion. Nations have swept like ocean waves from the
North throughout the centuries: Greeks, Scythians,
Huns, Persians, Afghans. Then came modest settle¬
ments of Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, Danes.
Why consider a few ships and some wee groups of
pale-faced sailors?” the princes must have asked at their
appearance. But the arms of one of the groups grad¬
ually gathered in all, and its king, on a distant island
in North Europe, took the title, Emperor of India.
These realms today constitute one-sixth of the British
territory on the globe.
There is in India every type, from the wealthy over-
lords, savants, and skillful professional men, down to
the bow and arrow men of the jungles of Assam. There
are sallow debilitated peoples, and the handsome Sikhs
of the Capuchin mission field in the Punjab — the major
element in the British Government’s Indian forces.
There are one hundred and eighty languages and one
hundred additional dialects. Seventy per cent of the
three hundred and forty million are farmers, raising
huge mountains of grain and other produce, but never¬
theless in great part living forever poor. The astound¬
ing statement is made that eight out of ten of this world
of human beings go to bed each night still hungry. In
Burma and Ceylon, as many as one in five can read and
write ; but the average falls from this until, in the Chota
Valley of the northeast, but six in every thousand are
C1813
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
literate. The country totals but eighteen million six
hundred thousand educated people.
We see two halls loaded with precious specimens from
missions in every part of the territory, note the figure of
three million Catholics, and are ready to pass on with a
feeling of satisfaction. Be prepared, however, to hear
that, aside from a bright spot in apostolic times, a few
later sporadic efforts, each centuries apart, and the
activity of the last fifty years, the only period of exten¬
sive missionary labor has been the one hundred and fifty
years of Portuguese dominance beginning with the six¬
teenth century. The methods of the Portuguese are
attacked, it is true. A shipload of captured pirates were
given their choice of accepting Christianity or of being
thrown into the sea; there was ruthless destruction of
pagan temples, fouling of sacred pools, proscribing of
pagan worship. But where the missioners prospered
best, force was not used. Instead, beautiful public cere¬
monies were held at the baptism of converts, and the
great families gave their names and favor to the new
Christians. Missioners were aided from the royal treas¬
ury, and the State showed that it regarded love for
Christ as no matter of indifference.
When the Portuguese fell, great progress ceased, but
not because kingly favor was essential to advance. The
supply of missioners ceased, the support ceased, and
other obstacles arose. By native priests and a few
workers from Europe the old gains were in great part
D32]
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
held, and tiny thrusts forward were recorded .now and
then; but it can be said that only since the establish¬
ment of the Hierarchy in 1886 has a consistent move¬
ment been once more put on foot. A third of a mil¬
lion converts have been added in the last ten years. The
Protestants in the same period have advanced by over
half a million.
As in China, the bulk of the Catholics of India are in
a few great centers, though the mission effort today is
satisfactorily distributed throughout the country. Gen¬
erally speaking, the nearer one gets to the tip of the
great Indian triangle, the larger are the groups of the
faithful. In the North, the ground is new, is harder to
cover, presents greater obstacles through the influence
of the Moslems. The most numerous single body is in
Malabar and on the torrid coast of Coromandel. There
Saint Francis Xavier labored among the pearl fishers.
But worthy predecessor of the great Jesuit was the
Apostle Saint Thomas, who is father of the Syrian, or
Saint Thomas, Christians, a body of high caste Indians
who have had the Faith as long as have the Romans.
Today they number nearly half a million, with a rite of
their own, forming about twenty per cent of the Catho¬
lics of India and about twelve per cent of Travancore
in which they are found. One of my most constant
companions during these months at the Exposition has
been one of the six hundred Malabar priests — a doctor
of divinity from a Roman university, a missionary
P84]
TESTIMONIAL TO THE HOLY FATHER FROM THE HIERARCHY
OF THE SYRIAN CATHOLICS OF INDIA
The Indians of the Syro-Malabar Rite have a native archbishop and six
native bishops, as well as over six hundred native priests.
The testimonial case is a beautiful product in ivory, silver, and gold.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
among the pagans of his district, a scholar of Indian
Catholic history, and a charming priestly gentleman.
Next in importance to Malabar, from the viewpoint
of numbers, are the old Portuguese and French pos¬
sessions, parts of which still belong to those nations.
Beautiful Ceylon, “the pearl of the Indies,” has close
to four hundred thousand Catholics. We may mention
here that a Paris missioner, on hearing me express admi¬
ration for the exhibit of Colombo, the island’s greatest
diocese, remarked that this mission is reputed to be one
of the best organized, not only in India, but in the
whole mission field. The Oblates of Mary Immaculate
have here, apparently, a star of glory comparable with
that which they have won through their efforts in the
Canadian Northwest. The best progress among the
aborigines is in the Chota Nagpur mission of the Bel¬
gian Jesuits and the Hyderabad field of the Milan
Fathers. A photograph of the strong resolute face of
Father Lievens, in the Jesuit exhibit, is a simple tribute
to this organizer, in 1889, of the Chota Nagpur work,
which has resulted in almost two hundred thousand of
those people entering the fold during the last thirty-five
years.
As throughout the Exposition, in the India halls the
land and its people hold precedence over the stressing
of the mission work. It is only by search that we dis¬
cover that thirteen bodies of religious orders, congrega¬
tions, or societies are supplying mission priests; twelve
D36]
A DIP INTO INDIA
societies, mission Brothers; and sixty-four bodies, mis¬
sion Sisters; and that in the land are thirty colleges,
two hundred orphanages, one hundred foundling
asylums.
One of the objects to catch the eye on entering the
first hall is a mongoose coiled in deadly embrace by
a cobra. Visitors stare in horror, and exclaim, “Oh,
the poor mongoose!” However, if they know their
Kipling, they may feel that the mongoose will win in
the battle so graphically caught in progress by the
clever mounting of these two specimens. A series of
forty beautiful photographs gives a gripping story of
India’s famous elephant hunts. Specimens to the total
of thousands tell other stories of animal life, of plant
life, and, best of all, of human life.
For instance, from the Holy Cross mission in Bengal,
field of our American priests of Notre Dame Univer¬
sity fame, who have their mission seminary at the
Catholic University in Washington, comes the model
of a Hindu holy man, a sannayasi , sitting on his bed of
nails. Near him stands a Buddhist monk, with shorn
head, yellow robe, and begging bowl. From the Mill
Hill mission in lovely Kashmir is a model of the Fran¬
ciscan Missionaries of Mary at work among the tent
dwellers. A group from the splendid Paris missions in
the south shows Sisters teaching the natives to better
their farm work; while another, from Burma, with a
Sister in its midst, represents the pariahs, India’s low
par]
INDIANS PREPARING MODEL OF THE LAHORE CATHEDRAL
The Specimen is exquisitely done and reequired weeks of patient labor.
A DIP INTO INDIA
caste millions who constitute one-sixth of her popula¬
tion.
Most students of India unite in saying that the two
great evils which keep the country from deserving a
place in the consortium of nations are caste and child
marriage. Caste is already a byword for all that is
shameful and unjust in the social cutting off of man
from man. Child marriage is equally evil. By actual
statistics, one girl of every seventy-two under five years
of age in India is married; one in ten, between five
and ten years; one in two, between ten and fifteen
years; four in five, between fifteen and twenty years.
Many a girl of India has brought into the world a dozen
wee babes before the average American girl has finished
her school days.
But just what may be the obstacles in India or any
other mission country is accidental to the one great
essential — earnest, organized missionary effort. Our
day is seeing such effort soaring to hitherto untouched
heights; and of even deeper import than the coming of
the European is the swelling of the ranks of the native
clergy. India’s total of seventeen hundred and fifty-
one indigenous priests is the highest of all mission coun¬
tries ; China standing next with one thousand and fifty-
seven, and Indo-China third with one thousand and
twenty-one. Africa has eighty-four, J apan and Korea
eighty-one, giving a total of over four thousand for
the mission field. Miserably low the figure still is, but
C1393
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
let us be patient. Some five hundred years, and per¬
haps we can have the million native priests that are
needed for the billion souls in non-Christian lands. And
what are five centuries to a Church forever renewing its
youth like the eagle!
Before closing, a thought on India’s rulers. It will
not be a breach of confidence to say that a priest with
a responsible place in the Congregation of Propaganda
told me, a short time ago, that his prayer each day is
for the conversion of England. “Oh, if we but had
England as a Catholic nation!” he said; and then went
on to explain how splendidly encouraging for Catholic
missioners he thinks the attitude of Britishers in many
corners of the globe.
There is no Anglophile, however rabid, who will dare
defend without exception the British Empire’s ethics in
the history of her colonies. None will call her an active
champion of the Gospel. And none will grant her a
monopoly among the nations for whatever good is being
done, though her opportunities far exceed those of all
others. Perhaps her aid resolves itself into the simple
old principle of laissez faire ; but the fact remains,
many observant missioners claim, that in few missions
not under the Union Jack — and one hundred and
thirty-eight of our three hundred and sixty-seven fields
are in British territory — are government policies health¬
ier for the solid progress of missions. England at
present is coming slowly to the Church at the rate of
'[140]
A DIP INTO INDIA
twelve thousand converts a year. If missions are to
profit, may the prayer of the Roman priest soon be
heard ! Many moves in the strategy of conquering the
pagan world for the Savior must be executed far behind
the lines.
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4?
-G
H
CHAPTER IX
THE HALLS OF FAR CATHAY
Fifteen mission institutes have sent, from every part
of. the Chinese Republic, an assemblage of tens of thou¬
sands of items. These stand on either side of the aisle,
a tenth of a mile long, from the entrance of the first
China Hall to the exit of the second. Four societies
each transported more than forty cases, over the great
ocean lane which leads down the Pacific Coast of Asia
to the Straits Settlements, across the Indian Ocean,
through the Red Sea and the Mediterranean to Italy.
Chinese history begins at 2800 B.C. and during the
centuries which preceded the birth of the Savior much
that was worthy in art and in culture was attained. In
the exhibit there are items to remind us of those cen¬
turies of yore. The Franciscan missioners have a dis¬
play of antique porcelains and metal work which dates
from 1600 B.C., and one four-sided vase of striking
beauty is the only specimen of its kind in existence. A
collection of coins begins with the queer hatchet-shaped
copper pieces of 1122 B.C. and is a more complete set
than that in the British Museum, numbering in all six
thousand six hundred and eighty-eight pieces. An
[143]
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
American was recently refused his offer of approxi¬
mately $50,000 for it. Two old incense pots, sitting
quietly on the floor of the display of the Roman Mis¬
sionary Seminary of Saint Peter and Paul, sent up
sweet perfumes to the gods thirty-five hundred and fifty
years ago. A temple bell nearby first called Chinese to
prayer in 1666 B.C. — thirty-five hundred and ninety-
one years ago. The statement, “China is old,” takes on
a new meaning to one standing here in the pavilions.
The silks, the ivory, the ebony, the bronzes, the por¬
celains, the cloisonne, together with exquisite specimens
of needlework, of carving, of molding, of painting,
prove beyond doubt that a skill of hand, an intelligence
of mind, an ideal of soul, existed in the artists and arti¬
sans who produced these treasures.
However, it is not the things made, but the makers,
who are the subject of the Exposition. The homes, the
customs, the religions, of this one-fourth of the human
race are displayed with no attempt to single out the
queer things. The Paris missioners have a series of
very exact models of buildings and occupations, and
several societies have beautiful specimens of Chinese
furniture. The Salesians and the Saint Columban mis¬
sioners show the interior of a Chinese home; the Milan
Fathers, a matrimonial party; the Scheut Fathers, a
tent and tent dwellers of Mongolia. The Augustinians
have a collection of the Chinese classics, and several
societies show the products of nature. Milan has a large
[144]
A SECTION OF THE CHINA HALLS
Three American exhibits are in this hall.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
display of Chinese actors’ masks and the paper models
burnt at funerals. The Vincentians and the Fran¬
ciscans each have a rendition of the Buddhist concept of
hell; the Paris Society has a great bronze Buddha from
Canton; the Macao missioners, a pagan shrine; while
Maryknoll’s piece de resistance is an altar to the
Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, Kwanyin.
It is interesting to observe how the concern of so
many of the visitors for the people and for those who
are bearing them the Gospel manifests itself. Most
noticeable is the haste with which every missioner is
surrounded as soon as he makes his appearance in the
halls. For instance, a bearded Franciscan came in the
other afternoon, and immediately a circle of earnest
faces formed about him. In a few moments the group
had from him a long and interesting story: he was a
Belgian, he had been sixteen years in China, he knew
the priest who had sent this object, he had such and
such an intimate connection with that object — and then
followed all manner of facts about the field. With the
skill inherent in the sons of the Low Countries, he
shifted from Italian to French, to German, to English.
In the Hall of Mission History and in the Hall of
Martyrs we have learned of many of the figures who
were great in carrying the Faith to China. John of
Monte Corvino in the thirteenth century trekked over¬
land from Rome to Peking, baptized six thousand souls,
built two churches, and made a beginning for Christian
[1463
CHINESE ALTAR TO THE GODDESS OF MERCY
This altar to the Buddhist goddess, Kwanyin, is the centerpiece of the
Maryknoll (Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America) exhibit. It was
purchased from a dismantled temple in Kwangtung Province, China.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
life in the Chinese capital. A brief span, and his work
was swallowed up. Saint Francis Xavier, in the mid¬
dle of the sixteenth century, died at Sancian Island,
facing China whose conquest was his dream. It was
for his brother Jesuits, Ricci, Schall, Verbiest, and the
others, to advance with the Cross to the capital o,nce
more and by superb skill to lay new Christian founda¬
tions. Dominicans, Franciscans, Vincentians, Paris
missioners, also had their part. An undulating history
of peace and persecution has been the story since, the
last great outbreak being the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.
A painting above the doorway in the first hall depicts
the dastardly attack on the Franciscan Missionaries of
Mary during this rise of fury; and photographs in the
Manchuria section, each of a French mission Sister,
bear the horrible but eloquent words, “Burnt alive by
the Boxers.” Scores more met death in the carnage of
1900, and individuals have suffered since. The latest
of the hundred and seventy- three martyrs and confes¬
sors of the Paris Foreign Missions was Father Dave-
nas, who was imprisoned and tortured in Tibet (con¬
sidered a tributary to China) in 1924. The Belgian
Franciscan pointed out the picture of Father Julian
Adons, who was killed in 1922. As Father Adons set
out on his last journey he asked the Belgian to accom¬
pany him, but for some reason the latter was unable to
comply. “I, too, could have been massacred!” said the
old veteran with a dry chuckle. I recall reading at
D48j
EXHIBIT FROM THE DIOCESE OF MACAO
The cases contain beautiful specimens of carved ivory, metal woil
porcelains, and embroideries.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
Maryknoll another story of death, which a pen draw¬
ing in the Franciscan exhibit tells. A saintly padre of
sixty-six, a Father Melotti, whose mission was but a
day’s journey from the Belgian’s, was taken by bandits
in the summer of 1924 and held for eighty-six days.
The bandits, being attacked, tried first to move their
prisoner, but when they were pressed too hard they
shot him and left him by the roadside. He died the
next day.
Despite these instances of suffering, the record for
the past twenty-five years is consoling. Students of mis¬
sions consider China the most promising field of the
world today. Though the nineteenth century, with al]
its bloodshed, was able to raise the total of Catholics
in the empire over half a million, since 1900 a new mil¬
lion and a half have been added, giving the Church in
China an enrollment of two million two hundred thou¬
sand. The Republic, which has as its civil units the
eighteen provinces, plus Mongolia, Manchuria, Tibet,
and Turkestan, is divided into sixty-four vicariates and
prefectures, containing twenty-four hundred priests,
of whom over one thousahd are Chinese. The Western
missioners represent at least eighteen different nations,
the latest to contribute its sons and daughters being
our own United States.
The story of the interrupted but persistent advance
in the occupation of territory is illustrated at the Expo¬
sition by the history of the two provinces in which
P5Q]
BED FROM A WEALTHY CHINESE HOME
The bed is of richly ornamented lacquerware. It came from Ningpo, the
center of the best lacquer work in China.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
Maryknoll has lately commenced work, Kwangtujig
and Kwangsi. The first missioners in this region were
the Jesuits, in the sixteenth century. The Dominicans
and the Paris missioners joined them in the seventeenth,
and converts grew to thirty thousand. In 1732, Catho¬
licity was proscribed, and the total of faithful dropped
to seven thousand. Numbers of missioners were put to
death. In 1842, religious liberty was secured again, and
the Paris missioners took the territory. Now this area,
containing thirty-seven million people, has been divided
into seven missions, which total one hundred and thirty
thousand Catholics. I felt very proud to find, at the
end of the venerable record, the statement that the
Americans of Maryknoll have taken over a sector of
this ground so rich in past glories and future hopes.
The Exposition visitor, as I have observed him or her,
has respect and admiration for the mission priest or
Brother, but for the mission Sister there is a very
special and tender affection. I recall, during the days
of preparation last December, an old nun, bent with age
and crippled with sickness, who came daily to watch the
arrangement of the Jesuit exhibit. Now over eighty
years of age, she had been one of the first six Sisters
who, shortly after the missions attained their freedom
in the middle of the nineteenth century, went out from
France to build up the splendid body of Chinese vir¬
gins — now numbering two hundred and seventeen — who
work in the Jesuit missions. She labored in China for
[152]
SISTER (CANOSSIAN) RESCUING A CHINESE WAIF
This striking group stands in the Court of the Pine Cone.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
twenty years and then, broken in health, was ordered
home, her superiors believed to die. She has lived on,
however, through several decades, her heart exiled from
its beloved work in the East, her thoughts and her
prayers centered in the missions. It was a beautiful
sight to see her, each afternoon at four, hobble to the
door of the hall, helped by a Chinese nun who accom¬
panied her, and into the papal gardens, where she knelt
for the Holy Father’s blessing as he passed. That
blessing, too, I suppose, was offered for the missions.
Most touching, however, was the reverence given her
by all with whom she came in contact ; F ranciscan Mis¬
sionaries of Mary, Sisters of Charity, men and women
from many parts of the world, all crowded about her,
all children in the sight of her years. The workmen
would say to one another as she passed, “She is a mis¬
sionary!” and follow her with reverential eyes.
Many of the finest things displayed in the halls are
the work of orphans or of orphanage graduates. There
is a set of vestments, for example, made by pupils of
the Sisters in Shanghai, showing exquisite needlework
and valued at $1,300. The work of the orphanages for
boys stands out even more strongly. The third greatest
Jesuit mission in the world, ranking next to Calcutta
and Madras, is at Shanghai, and the woodcarving, the
paintings, the metal work, from its establishments make
us marvel. All except one of a series of eighty carved
pagodas, some five and six feet high, had to be left in
[154]
THE HALLS OF FAR CATHAY
China, due to lack of display space. A duplicate of the
set went to San Francisco for the Panama-Pacific Ex¬
position in 1915 and is now owned by the Field Museum
of Chicago. One of several attractive paintings is our
Blessed Mother robed in the official costume of the
Empress of China — the work of a Chinese artist.
A modern system of education is blundering into
action in China today, the attempt of weak and often
wrongly prepared new leaders. The Church looks with
favor on those aspirations to better training, but regrets
the godless influences which have had their part in mold¬
ing the new program. The Catholic policy will continue
the same in the East as it has been in the West, namely
the building up, at however tremendous a cost, of a
system of schools which will nurture faith as they im¬
plant secular knowledge. Catholic Brothers and Sis¬
ters in China have aided valiantly in initiating such a
system, but it is to be emphasized that at present the
progress is decidedly elementary. Most missioners have
made a splendid start with primary schools. However,
a Jesuit missioner told me emphatically, as we stood
here in the halls one day, that if Catholicity is to have
“face” in China, to number some besides paupers and
peasants among its followers, to have members of posi¬
tion who can influence great masses to look favorably
upon the Church, higher education is imperative.
The societies of priests, Brothers, and Sisters from
America now represented in China approximate
[15511
A CHINESE RICKSHAW COOLIE
This model is part of the exhibit of the Saint Columban Fathers.
THE HALLS OF FAR CATHAY
twenty. That they have been more important in their
promise than in their accomplishment up to the present,
is very evident to any visitor to the Exposition. Now
and then people who have passed through the halls
assure me that they saw no sign of any American so¬
ciety. Normal powers of observation, however, will
reveal three distinct American exhibits — those of the
American Passionists, Saint Columban’s of Omaha, and
Maryknoll. Several other American bodies are given
mention; still others are not. When there is an en¬
tire absence of recognition, it is, I believe, because, being
newly in the field, the societies concerned have not had
the organization to send display material. This is un¬
fortunate. Americans are an important class of visitors
to Rome, and their pride is hurt, and consequently their
interest dulled, to find so little mention of any home¬
land efforts.
Of course, we are only of yesterday. Maryknoll,
people say, is quite phenomenal, but only because,
being but fourteen years old, it has eighty piiests,
Brothers, and Sisters in the field, and a total of over
five hundred members and candidates. Its first mis-
sioners reached China in 1918. Official standing &s
a prefecture apostolic was granted to the new Amei-
ican mission in August, 1924, when young Father
Walsh” — James E., of Cumberland, Maryland — was
made head of the Kongmoon Prefectuie, a temtoi^ al
most the size of New England, containing about eight
C1573
rN?
0 THE CATHOLIC FOREIGN MISSION SOCIETY OF AMERICA (MARYKNOLL)
The Buddhist altar to the Goddess of Mercy may he seen at the back.
THE HALLS OF FAR CATHAY
million souls, some seven thousand of whom are Cath¬
olics. Three from among the Maryknoll forces — the
saintly Father Price of North Carolina, Father Hod-
gins of Brooklyn, and Sister Gertrude Moore of New
York — already have finished their course and lie be¬
neath China’s soil as Maryknoll’s first offerings. Fifty-
four Maryknollers are in this territory, the others being
in Korea.
The Passionists and Saint Columban’s missioners
have splendid contingents of priests in the field. The
Passionists have American Sisters of Charity as auxi¬
liaries, while the distinctly American congregation of
the Sisters of Loretto are with Saint Columban’s.
Some one has figured the total of American forces in
China as about two hundred. This is hopeful. We have
read so long of our Protestant countrymen crossing the
Pacific by boatloads that it is a pleasure now to read,
occasionally, of a band of two dozen or more Catholic
missioners sailing on the same vessel. This happened
twice in 1924.
Once converted, the Chinese are as genuinely Cath¬
olic as the best among us in Europe or America. In
the little cemetery at Chala, outside Peking, have been
piously gathered the bones of some six thousand native
martyrs killed by the Boxers, the victims in the region
about the capital alone. There were recently placed in
the Exposition library, from the hand of Father Jean-
Marie Planchet of Peking, two volumes of documents
[159^
MODEL OF THE OLDEST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CHINA
During £>art of the nineteenth century this church was used as a pagan temple. It is now restored and
is in the care of the Jesuits of Shanchai.
THE HALLS OF FAR CATHAY
relating to these martyrs, and the story they tell turns
us back to the ages of the first persecutions. “I am
a Christian!” cried victim after victim of the Chinese
torturers, just as in the days of the praetors of Rome.
“Sacred Heart of Jesus, Thy Kingdom come in
China!” is the invocation of the Crusade of Prayer for
the conversion of Far Cathay. As we leave the China
halls, the words mount to our lips.
D«i3
CHAPTER X
THE LESSON LEARNED
This morning I slipped away from the Exposition
for a while, down to the Vatican Palace. An open-
sesame in the form of a tessera from a French mis-
sioner secured me entrance to the Hall of Consistories
for the official announcement, in the presence of His
Holiness, that the Korean martyrs are eligible for
beatification.
A Catholic journalist from the New York W orld sat
by my side and we exchanged expressions of amaze¬
ment at the endurance of Pius XI under the tremendous
strain of his Holy Year program. During April alone
he received seventy-nine pilgrimages, and the following
months will see the numbers heavily increased. His
welcome to each is no empty formality. To some groups
he has spoken as long as thirty-five minutes ; and though
parties have numbered thousands he ordinarily offers
his hand to each member individually. Add to these
pilgrimages the weekly beatification or canonization
ceremonies, the business meetings with the hierarchy
from the whole world, and the tide of communications
which pours unendingly from* every corner of the globe
D«2]
THE LESSON LEARNED
to the desk in the Vatican, and one may form some idea
of the preoccupations of the white-robed Father of
Christendom.
In the face of it all, though His Holiness sometimes
appears fatigued to the point of exhaustion, as he did
this morning, his serene gracious poise is indestructible.
“Sempre calmo ” is the characterization of him that is
murmured through the corridors of the Vatican — “al¬
ways calm.” One of his secretaries hunted in vain for
a special Holy Year medal which was to be a gift to a
visitor. “I put it down in a fluster, Your Holiness, and
I cannot now locate it.” “But why a fluster?” was the
gentle reply. “There is never occasion for a fluster.”
Tired though he was this morning, his face lighted
and his voice thrilled as he spoke of the Korean martyrs.
He paid a delicate tribute to the clear and elegant
French of Archbishop de Guebriant, Superior-General
of the Paris Foreign Missions, who, after the reading of
the decrees, reviewed the Korean Church’s history of
heroism. There was nothing to add, the Holy Father
said, but one word and this from the depth of his heart
— the profound joy that was his to witness the entrance
of another nation into the Church’s martyrology.
Amid the flashing helmets of the giant Noble Guards,
who shield him with the greatest of care, Pius left. I
bid good-by to my journalist friend, Mr. McNally, and
left also.
But a new vision of the eternally entrancing beauty
D633
THE EXPOSITION LIBRARY OF MISSIONS
THE LESSON LEARNED
of that fair daughter of God, the Catholic Church, went
with me. I have pondered over it — lived on it — since.
Here before the Throne of Peter has come for me the
climax in the flow of those unsayable, unwritable, inex¬
pressible lights which, for one who lives awhile amid
the things missionary of this Holy Year, slowly make
their rendezvous in the chambers of the heart and image
there the loveliness of the Spouse of Christ. And after
a moment with this morning’s matchless glimpse of the
Household of the King, let us take leave of the Expo¬
sition.
The Exposition, you know, was meant most of all
as an instrument of interpretation for the Church.
That curious twist of things that lets men picture a
vista of Western World cities — European or American
— with Western World houses of worship, Western
World peoples, Western World priests and bishops, as
the Kingdom of God on earth, and leads them to tack
on, as anomalous appendages, the Catholic bodies of
Asia and Africa, is an offspring of lopsidedness of mind
— due to thoughtlessness perhaps, indifference perhaps,
self-centeredness perhaps — that has led men to forget
that the Faith is theirs by priority of time only, and
not of right.
Pius XI calls back from this wrong view all those
of us who have strayed to it; and he accomplishes his
purpose by an Exposition. The lesson of the mis¬
sion specimens behind the Vatican is not, as some think,
[1^
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
the scholarship of the missioner. They reveal him, it is
true, as a student of the human race, as a geographer, as
a scientist, as an analyst of the languages, the religions,
the customs, of the globe. The Hall of Ethnology is a
triumph in its line and a monument to the learning of
the remarkable group of missioners with headquarters
at the Vienna house of the Society of the Divine Word;
it is a reflection, too, of the thoroughness of training
and of organization in this Society, which has led us to
admire its American branch at Techny. The Exposi¬
tion library, with its twenty thousand volumes under
the librarian, Father Streit, and the Exposition
Revista’s products of learning under the leadership of
His Holiness’ successor in the Ambrosian Library,
Monsignor Grammatica, are features which reveal the
intellectual depth, the solidity, of the Church’s move¬
ment for world conversion. But this is not the great
lesson of the display in the Papal Gardens.
Again, the Exposition’s first aim is not to draw up
in battle array long lines of organizations who train mis¬
sionary men or women, nor to tabulate those associations
in every Christian land which by securing material aid
act as the quartermasters of the missionary forces. We
are happy to see that such a new-born body as the Med¬
ical Mission Section of the Catholic Hospital Associa¬
tion of the LTnited States and Canada, with its place in
the Hall of Medicine, is welcomed to the company of
mission promoters. That whip of the college men and
pee:
T3
*
^ G
V ctf
O tin
P 6
of scholars led by Doctor Franchini
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
women of the United States, the Catholic Students’
Mission Crusade, by its place at the Exposition not
only has been a source of information regarding the
vigorous initiative of our American student life, but
promises to inspire counterparts to its organization in
several countries of Europe. Yet none will call such
work, however valuable, a major accomplishment of the
Exposition.
The revealing of depth of soul, wealth of sacrifice,
and, most of all, of catholicity of love, as the basis for
the reigning of the Cross, is the most glorious preroga¬
tive of the missionary life of the Church. The Exposi¬
tion is a source for just this inspiration and this is its
crowning achievement. The ceremony in the Vatican
has made me realize this more keenly than ever. The
summary of the Korean martyrdoms laid before His
Holiness this morning was but a pattern of the Catholic
glories of almost every people of the earth, a likeness
of the days of persecution in old Rome, a sermon on
the oneness of the human race in the capacity of all
peoples to accept the Faith whose font is Calvary.
A devoted missioner and princely gentleman, in
whose veins flows the blood of one of France’s finest
families, greatest of whose ancestors was the Marshal
de Guebriant, stood before the Throne of the Fisher¬
man and read the account of three sons of Old World
Catholicity. One in 1836, one in 1837, the third a
brief span later, moved up from the perilous missions
11168]
CROCIATA MISSIONARIA Dl STUDENTI CATTOLICI
DIFFUSA IN 3000 SCUOLE E COLLEGI DEGU SJATI UlVHTI
SOOOOO MEMBRI _ _
EXHIBIT OF THE CATHOLIC STUDENTS’ MISSION CRUSADE
This work of American students for missions has attracted great attention in Europe and promises to
prove the inspiration of several similar movements on the Continent.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
of China and Indo-China to the still more hazardous
field of Korea and secretly penetrated its confines.
Ardent believers welcomed them. But a Judas be¬
trayed the bishop, and a furious king vowed death to
every Christian within his territory. The bishop, Mon¬
signor Imbert, prayed for light to stave off the blow
about to strike his flock, and determined upon a solu¬
tion. He wrote to his two priests : “The good shepherd
giveth his life for his sheep. If you are not yet gone,
come and join me.”
Two knights of the Cross, Father Maubant and
Father Chastan, crept quietly from the cache in
which they were hiding, and wrote together a letter
to the Christians of Korea, and a second to their Supe¬
rior in Rome, the Prefect of the Congregation of Propa¬
ganda. To their confreres in far-off Paris went a third
message, a fond farewell and a plea that to this land
whose soil would soon drink up their life-blood, others
would follow to catch the torch they flung them. Then,
in the hope that their holocaust would slake the ruler’s
thirst for blood, they gave themselves to the soldiers
and went with their bishop to death.
But their move was partly in vain. The persecution
continued. And so we pass from a tale of Old World
heroism to the sublime sacrifices of an infant Christian¬
ity. Seventy-six men, women, and children were among
the slain and were, under Pius IX, declared Venerable.
At their head was the first of Korea’s native priests,
[170]
ANDREW KIM, FIRST NATIVE PRIEST OF KOREA, MARTYRED
IN 1846
This painting is the work of a young Korean artist. It hangs in the
Bishop’s house at Seoul, Korea.
THE VATICAN MISSION EXPOSITION
Andrew Kim. Among the others were such exquisite
flowers as Columba Kim, whose story ranks her with
the great Saint Agnes.
I stood this afternoon in the Exposition and talked
with a Negro priest of Ethiopia ; and in the course of
the last twenty-four hours have talked with, sat with, or
passed by on the street, Catholics of India, China, Indo-
China, and Japan. Read Christianity’s story in each
of these countries, meet their Christian children today,
then go aside and dream awhile, and build a kingdom in
your mind, a kingdom with a Savior leading all and a
world-united people following— a people one, without
rank, caste, class, or color-line. This is the true vision
of the Kingdom of God.
“May the oldest Churches never cease to furnish to
the youngest, models of sanctity,” ended the missioner
archbishop this morning, “and may the youngest
Churches become more and more worthy of their an¬
cestors, to the end that both may console her who is
the mother of all, the Holy Roman Church, and him,
its chief, the gloriously reigning Pontiff!” The sen¬
timent can hardly be improved upon for one bidding
adieu to the Vatican Mission Exposition. A prayer
then, for its founder, Pius XX, Vicegerent on earth of
the First Great Missioner, Jesus Christ!
D72]
Russia, Scandinavia, the Balkans, and the Near East are likewise
mission fields, but are not listed here. It is important to note that
these statistics deal only with strictly mission peoples. In the
Americas, of which North America includes Central America and the
West Indies, the mission peoples are the Indians, .Eskimos, and
Negroes. The term Pacific Islands here includes Oceania, the
East Indies, the Philippines, and Australia, but excludes the non¬
mission peoples of the Philippines and Australia. This distinction is
made by Father Arens, S.J., who has prepared the statistics for the
Vatican Mission Exposition.
Note that considering the \
dominant in power but are oi
tians. The great congested are
India, and Japan, and — a v<
these areas is heavier than in ai
China, one authority forecasts,
Great religious classes in t
first, Christianity, claims 34.2
: EAT MISSION FIELDS
ONE r
ures given are those of 1923.
a whole, Christian nations are
'red two to one by non-Chris-
; globe are non-Christian China,
ificant fact — the birth-rate in
,ian land. By natural increase
ial half a billion souls in 1950.
1 can be reduced to ten. The
. of living men (Catholics 16.5
per cent, Protestants 10.4 per cent, Schismatics 7.3 per cent). Of the
remaining peoples, all but 11.4 per cent (54.4 per ceftt) belong to the
six great oriental beliefs: Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Taoism, Con¬
fucianism, Buddhism, Shintoism. The primitives of the earth, who
hold various forms Of nature worship classified under the term Animism,
number not quite 10 per cent. About % of 1 per cent are Jews; and the
1 per cent remaining (approximately 16,000,000) fall_in the miscella¬
neous box. For breadth of diffusion, Moslemism stands next to
Christianity.
i.
-
",i .... . , v. ■
*\ .....
*
. . .... t - ■ .. .. .
Summing up these figures: Foreign priests 8632, native priests
4075, a total of 12,707; foreign Brothers 3183, native Brothers 832,
a total of 4015; foreign Sisters 12,933, native Sisters 11,157, a total of
24,090; lay helpers, a total of 65,641. This gives a total of 24,748
foreign missioners and, omitting the lay helpers, 16,064 consecrated
native workers. There is a grand total of 106,453 people employed in
the conversion of these eight pagan fields which comprise the bulk of
the non-Christian world.
For a native priesthood, India ]
Catholic population, Indo-China m:
As Indo-China also has the most n
having the best developed native
foreign priests in India and Indo-<
foreign Brothers in India and in tl
outnumber foreign Sisters in Indi
Africa is relatively best staffed, 1
best figure; but relative to.
most satisfactory showing,
iters, it can be regarded as
Native priests outnumber
ative Brothers outnumber
ese Empire; native Sisters
China, and China,
le priest, Brother, or Sister
for every 13,000 pagans; while japan is poorest equipped, with one for
every 86,000 pagans. We are to take into account, of course, that the
activity of a Brother or a Sister cannot be as effective as that of
a priest.
Women apostles, our foreign mission Sisters, outnumber men
apostles, our priests and Brothers, by over a thousand. The total
“foreign” body is slightly larger than the force of telephone operators
in New York City.
f*
v, ' * '• - : : •
THE
WORE D’S EIGHT
CHAF
MISSION CHURC
SOUTH
STATIONS
921
STATIONS
WITH CHURCHES OR
CHAPELS
683
STATIONS
13,707
STATIONS
10,913
STATIONS
WITH CHURCHES OR
CHAPELS
1 4,863
STATIONS
WITH CHURCHES OI
CHAPELS
6,795
The total of 66,352 stations in the fields would provide, if the surface
of the earth permitted, a stopping place every third of a mile around
the globe. There is an average of five stations to a mission priest, and
four churches or chapels of some nature, the total of churches and chapels
being 54,517. In South American missions there is a station for every
3200 mission people; in Africa one for every 9000 natives; in China one
for every 17,000.
In the whole United States there is an average of three churches for
every four priests. Though China and Indo-China, by combining,
can show a total of churches larger than that of the United States
(United States Catholic churches are 17,146), there is, as we need not
be reminded, a decided difference in the size and quality of those here
and those in the East.
One society, the Catholic Church Extension Society, has built almost
as many mission churches in American territory as there are Catholic
places of worship in all the Pacific Islands and the Japanese Empire.
/
l • -
' • *•
.
V i
■
THE
W O R L D’S E I G H 1
C H
M I S S I O
SOUTH
PRAYER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
37 5,366
LOWER SCHOOLS
NUMBER' PUPILS
732 53,235
PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
12 464
HIGHER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
18
1,948
PRAYER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
4,109 121,240
LOWER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
9,477 489,786
PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
244 10,521
HIGHER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
267
28,958
PRAYER SCHOOL:
NUMBER PUPI
285 4,51
LOWER school:
NUMBER PUPI
4,379 273,
PROFESSIONAL schc
NUMBER PUPI
85 5,4
HIGHER school
NUMBER PUP
336 75,;
There are a quarter of a million more pupils in the Catholic schools
of the United States than there are attendants at the mission schools
of the eight great fields (U. S. pupils, 1,988,376; mission schools pupils,
1,793,564). This includes the half a million children in mission prayer
schools. Omitting the 20,247 prayer schools in the fields, the missions
INDO
PRAYER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
4,879 162,009
LOWER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
2,088 75,345
PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
33 818
HIGHER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
54 11,789
PACIFIO-TSLANDS
PRAYER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
322 6,581
LOWER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
1,446 91,516
PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
20 350
HIGHER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
90
8,810
PRAYER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
10,560 198,189
LOWER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
2,037 62,736
PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
34 1,588
HIGHER SCHOOLS
NUMBER PUPILS
213
19,791
have 22,362 educational establishments, 20,874 of which are elementary
schools. This is less than twice as many schools as have the three
states of California, Oregon and Washington. The 1026 higher schools
in the missions include 8 universities — 6 in India, 1 in China, 1 in Japan
—which have a total enrollment of 4742.
■
'•r ' J'-
' 1 ' * . : ■' ■ ‘
■
>•
V. .
The relative importance of orphanages in the missions is revealed
by comparing these figures with the Church’s statistics for the United
States. China alone has as many Catholic asylums as the United
States'(U. S. 316), though only slightly more than 50 per cent of the
AT MISSION FIELDS
United States enrollment. The whole field has 1363 orphanages with
a total of 73,572 orphans.
Statistics for other asylums, such as homes for the aged and for
defectives, are not at hand, but each field has a group of such.
: f ■ r •• •• • . s>- .
; : ■- .. . - ■ ■
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V
I
I
:
j
t
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i 7 i
THE
W O R L D’S EIGHT
HOSPITALS °A
SOUTH
HOSPITALS
NUMBER PATIENTS
13
DISPENSARIES
NUMBER
32
HOSPITALS
NUMBER PATIENTS
285
34,701
DISPENSARIES
NUMBER
701
HOSPITALS
NUMBER PATIEN
44 2,8<=
DISPENSARIES
NUMBER
183
Catholic hospital work in the fields is in a primitive state of develop¬
ment. There are almost as many people engaged in the medical pro¬
fession in New York State (64,461) as there were patients treated in
all the hospitals of the eight fields in 1923 (total-patients, 71,126). It
may be noted above that Africa has the best figures to date. The one
borough of Manhattan in New York City has ten more hospitals than
have all the China missions. There is a .total of 5S7 hospitals in the
mission fields..
REAT MISSION FIELDS
There are 1786 dispensaries. The term dispensary often means' a.
simple traveling medicine box, from which a Sister or lay Brother
distributes remedies to the natives.
Though missioners feel that the hospital usually is not, as is the
school, a solid planter of conviction in Christianity, it has great value
in that it thaws out icy indifference. If the warm impulses which its
lessons in Christ’s charity instill are followed up by missionary endeavor,
. conversions result.
t
The printed word, next in power to the school for training minds
and for moving minds to a line of action, is in advance of the school by
the extensiveness of the influence which it can. claim. Though a com¬
mercial and political press is developing rapidly in Asia, and to a small
extent in Africa, no great mission field except Africa, India, and China
possesses even a dozen Catholic periodicals. The majority of these
publications have a circulation of but a few thousands and are cramped
in their usefulness by lack-of .mearjs to develop.
A few of the presses, however, have magnificent establishments.
Nazareth Press (Paris Foreign Missions) at Hongkong has a publica¬
tion list of hundreds of volumes, which includes works in twenty lan¬
guages. The Jesuit press at Beirut in Syria (which, however, is not
included in this survey as the territory is not within one of the eight
fields treated) in 1923 printed a total of 143,000 volumes, Besides
3 periodicals in Arabic,- 1 in. French, and a number of brochures.
Missions presses total 128, and mission periodicals 110.
INDEX
Abyssinia* 94.
Adons, Fr. Julien, 148.
Afghanistan, 110, 112, 116, 118.
Africa, 34, 58, 61, 74, 90, 93-108.
America ( Central , North, South),
47, 76-92, 155.
American character, 86.
American exhibits, 144, 146, 157.
American missioners (see also
Maryknoll), 56, 150, 152, 155, 157,
159.
Animism, 106, 108.
Annam, 118.
Ansgar, St., 50.
Apostles, First, 21, 28, 42, 47, 54, 60.
Apostolic commission of Church, 42.
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 51.
Arabia, 112.
Armenians, 114.
Asia, 32, 54, 58, 111-161.
Athanasius, St., 96.
Augustine, Saint, 50, 61, 96.
Augustinians, 65, 144.
Australia, 128.
Austria, 50.
Bagdad Village, 114.
Baluchistan, 116, 118.
Barron, Fr. Edward, 98.
Beirut, 114.
Belgian Congo, 102, 108.
Benedict, St., 47, 48.
Benedictines, 48, 50.
Bengal, 130, 137.
Berneux, Bishop, 119.
Bhutan, 116, 118.
Boniface, St., 50.
Bourne, Cardinal, 128.
Boxer Rebellion, 70, 148.
Brotherhood of man, 130.
Brothers in missions, 155, 157.
Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions,
87.
Burma, 67, 130, 131, 137.
Cagliero, Cardinal, 82.
Calcutta, 154.
California, 80.
Cambodia, 118.
Cameroons, 86.
Canada, 84, 86, 136.
Cannibalism, 124.
Capacity of all peoples for True
Faith, 130, 165, 168.
Capuchins, 57, 84.
Carmelites, 114.
Castanet, Fr., 69.
Caste in India, 137, 139.
Catholic Foreign Mission Society of
America (see Maryknoll).
Catholic Students’ Mission Crusade,
168.
Catholic University, Washington, 64,
137.
Catholicity of Church, 26, 34, 130,
165, 168, 172.
Ceylon, 130, 131, 136.
Chaldeans, 114.
Chanel, Bl. Peter, 72.
Characteristics of missioners, 47.
Chastan, Fr., 170.
Chile, 84.
Child marriage in India, 139.
China, 62, 74, 112, 116, 127, 143-161,
170, 172.
Chota Nagpur, 131, 136.
Claver, St. Peter, 72, 90.
Clement, St., 96.
INDEX
Clet, Bl. Francis Regis, 70.
Cochin-China, 110.
Columban, St., 50.
Columbus, Christopher, 47, 48, 52,
54, 98, 114.
Congregation of Propaganda, 32.
Connecticut, 100.
Constantine, 48.
Constantino, Fr., 57.
Cornay, Bl. Charles, 69.
Coromandel, 134.
Corrado, Cardinal, 72.
Cote, Fr. Joseph, 102.
Crusade of Prayer for China, 161.
Cyprian, St., 96.
Cyril, St. 50, 96.
Dallet, Fr., 120.
Damietta, 41.
Darwin, 82.
Davenas, Fr., 148.
De Bretenieres, Just, 120.
De Guebriant, Archbishop, 163, 168.
De La Motte, Bishop, 57.
Delbrouck, Fr. Victor, 70.
Della Rabida, Fr., 52.
Do Nobili, Fr., 57.
De Smet, Fr., 57.
Dissemination of Catholic missions,
34.
Dominic, St., 50.
Dominicans, 50, 51, 57, 65, 119, 148,
152.
East Indies, 54, 122.
Education, Catholic policy of, 155.
Egypt, 38, 40, 96.
England, Bishop, 98.
England, conversion of, 140, 141.
English attitude towards missions,
140.
Ethiopia, 74, 172.
Ethnology, Hall of, 166.
Europe, 50, 61.
Fagnano, 82.
Farde, Fr. Peter, 47, 58.
Fetishism, 108.
Field Museum, Chicago, 155.
First Missioner, 42, 172.
Florida, 78, 80.
France, 50, 112.
Francis of Assisi, St., 41, 47, 48, 50.
72, 74.
Franciscans, 4, 6, 37, 40, 42, 44, 50.
51, 52, 57, 58, 61, 65, 70, 80, 82, 84.
86, 96, 116, 143, 146, 148.
Franciscan Missionaries of Mary 72,
74, 137, 148, 154.
Gabet, Fr., 116.
Gall, St., 50.
Georgia, 38.
Germany, 50.
God, universal belief in, 105, 106.
Goddess of Mercy, 146.
Great Britain, 112, 128, 131.
Gregory, Pope St., 61.
Hennepin, Fr., 57.
Henry the Navigator, 52, 98.
Hermosilla, Bishop, 67, 119.
History, Hall of, 45-58.
Holy Cross Fathers, 137.
Holy Ghost Fathers, 92, 98, 100,
106.
Holy Land, see Palestine.
Holy Year, 24, 30, 32, 76, 162.
Hue, Abbe, 116.
Hyderabad, 136.
Ignatius, Bl., of Azevedo, 64.
Ignatius, St., 54.
Imbert, Bishop, 170.
India, 54, 57, 74, 112, 116, 127, 128,
130-141, 172.
Indo-China, 62, 118, 119, 170, 172.
Innocent IV, Pope, 51.
Ireland, 128.
Irish foundations in Europe, 50.
Italy, 50, 98, 128.
Japan, 56, 62, 65, 112, 125, 172.
Jesuits, 54, 56, 57, 64, 65, 72, 80, 86.
87, 103, 114, 146, 152, 154, 155.
Jogues, Bl., 86.
INDEX
John of Monte Corvino, 52, 146.
John of Plano Carpini, 51, 52.
Kashmir, 137.
Kelly, Fr. John, 98.
Kim, Bl. Andrew, 170, 172.
Kim, Columba, 172.
Kongmoon Prefecture, 157.
Korea, 119, 120, 125, 126, 159, 170,
172.
Kwangsi Province, 152.
Kwangtung Province, 152.
Lalemant, 86.
Laos, 118.
La Salette Fathers, 102.
Las Casas, 80.
Laureati, Fr., 47.
Lavigerie, Cardinal, 74, 96.
Le Roy, Archbishop, 106.
Liberia, 94, 98.
Libermann, Fr. F. M., 98.
Lin, Bl. Agatha, 72.
Livingstone, David, 94.
Louisiana, 90.
Madagascar, 100.
Madras, 154.
Magellan, 82.
Malabar, 128, 134, 135.
Malacca, 120.
Malay Peninsula, 118.
Malaysia, 122.
Manchuria, 70.
M archetti-Selvaggiani, Archbishop,
37.
Mariannhill, 103.
Marist, 71.
Mark, St., 96.
Marquette, Fr., 57.
Martyrs, 20, 44, 51, 58, 60-74, 118,
119, 120, 148, 159, 161-163, 168,
170, 171.
Maryknoll, 56, 119, 127, 146, 150,
152, 157, 159.
Maryland, 90.
Massachusetts, 38.
Massai, Cardinal, 74.
Maubant, Fr., 170.
Medical Mission Section of Catholic
Hospital Association, 166.
Medicine, Flail of, 166.
Melotti, Fr., 150.
Mercedarians, 61.
Mesopotamia, 112, 114.
Methodius, St., 50.
Milan Fathers, 136, 144.
Mill Hill Society, 100, 137.
Mission Eras, 47-54.
Missioner, First, 36, 42, 172.
Mohammedanism, 48, 50, 51, 61, 94,
96, 108, 124, 134.
Mongolia, 144.
Mongols, 51, 52, 112.
Museums:
Chiaramonti, Rome, 22.
Field, Chicago, 155.
Metropolitan, New York, 87.
Naples, 60.
National, Washington, 87.
Nagasaki, 64, 65.
Natal, 103.
Native clergy, 72, 118, 128, 132, 134,
136, 139, 140, TaO, 170, 172.
Native Sisters, 72, 152, 154.
Near East, 61, 111, 112-116.
Negro problem in United States
88-92.
Nepal, 116.
New Mexico, 87.
New York, 112.
Nicholas IV, Pope, 52.
North Carolina, 159.
Oblates of Mary Immaculate, 86,
136.
Oceania, 112, 122, 124.
Odoric, 116.
Origen, 96.
Orsucci, Bl. Angelo, 64.
Palestine, 36-44, 112.
Palladius, St., 50.
Pallu, Bishop, 57.
INDEX
Panama-Pacific Exposition, 155.
Paraguay, 80.
Paris Society for Foreign Missions,
57, 65, 67, 69, 70, 116, 118, 119, 125,
136, 137, 144, 146, 148, 153,
163.
Passionists, 157, 159.
Patagonia, 82.
Patrick, St., 50.
Peking, 52, 146, 159.
Penang, 72.
Perboyre, Bl. John Gabriel, 70.
Perry, Commodore, 62.
Persecution, 28, 41, 48, 56, 62, 64,
70, 148, 159, 161, 170.
Persia, 50, 51, 112.
Peru, 80.
Petijean, Bishop, 65.
Philadelphia, 56, 95.
Philippines, 58, 122, 125.
Pindar, Mr., 98.
Pius IX, Pope, 170.
Pius XI, Pope, 22, 24, 26, 28, 32, 34,
96, 120, 122, 154, 162, 163, 166, 168,
172.
Planchet, Fr. Jean-Marie, 159.
Poetry of missioners, 74.
Portugal, 54, 98.
Products of mission institutions, 38,
114, 120, 122, 154, 155.
Propaganda Fide, Sacred Congrega¬
tion of, 170.
Protestantism, 98, 133, 159.
Quichua Indians, 180.
Redemptorists, 84.
Religious beliefs of primitives, 105,
106, 108.
Retrospect, Hall of, 45 .
Rhode Island, 38, 102.
Rice, Fr., 56, 148.
Right of all peoples to the Faith,
36.
Roman Mission Seminary of SS.
Peter and Paul, 144.
Rnppert, Fr., S. J., 88.
Russia, 50.
St. Columban missioners, 157, 159.
St. Joseph’s Society of the Sacred
Heart. 90.
St. Louis, Missouri, 56.
St. Peter’s Church, 21, 22, 26, 30, 34,
36.
Sacred Congregations, 32.
Salesians, 82, 84, 144.
Sanc-ian Island, 56, 148.
Schall, Fr., 56, 148.
Scheut Fathers, 70, 144.
Scholarship of missioners, 106, 166.
Serra, Fr. Junipero, 80.
Shanghai. 154.
Siam, 116, 118.
Singapore, 72.
Sisters in missions, 72, 152, 154, 155,
157.
Sisters of Charity, 154.
Sisters of Loretto, 159.
Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament,
92.
Slavery in America, 88, 90.
Society of the Divine Word, 92, 106,
166.
South Dakota, 86.
Spain, 50, 98.
Spirit of missioners, 74, 119.
Straits Settlements, 54.
Stuart, Iowa, 56.
Switzerland, 50.
Syria, 112, 114.
Syrian Christians, 134.
Tatars, 50, 112.
Tatary, 51.
Techny, Illinois, 166.
Tertullian, 96.
Texas, 118.
Thomas, St., 116, 134.
Tibet, 57, 116, 148.
Tientsin, 72.
Tierra del Fuego, 80, 82.
Tokyo, 64.
Tongking, 72, 118, 119.
Travancore, 34.
Trinitarians, 61.
Tripoli, 74.
[176^
INDEX
Turkey, 112.
Turks, 41, 44, 114.
United States, 86, 87-92, 157-159.
Vatican, The, 22, 24, 34, 51, 64, 162,
166, 168.
Vatican Mission Exposition:
Inauguration, 34; Library, 28,
159, 166; Review, 28, 166; Sig¬
nificance, 28, 31, 36, 165, 168,
172; Site, 24, 26, 28, 30.
Venard, Bl. Theophane, 67, 119,
120.
Verbiest, Fr., 56, 148.
Vincentians, 70, 116, 146, 148.
Washington, D. C., 85.
White Lathers, 74, 96, 109.
“White Man’s Grave,” 100.
William of ltuysbroek, 52.
Willibrord, St., 50.
Witch doctor, 124.
World, conversion of, 28, 36, 42, 172,
Xavier, St. Francis, 54, 56, 62, 74,
134, 148.
Yamomoto, Admiral, 64.
Y, Bl. Lucy, 72.
Zambesi, 94.
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